galactipunks

[galactipunks]

Here's an idea for a Rimworld mod that I've had in my head for years at this point and I'm honestly surprised hasn't been made yet and got popular. (That being said it's been a while since I played Rimworld so something like this might actually exist now.)

One of my biggest complaints with vanilla Rimworld is how static raids feel. For being arguably the biggest central threat of the game, they are shockingly repetitive and simplistic in how they function at their core. The goal with this mod idea is to re-do the system and give raids some much-needed mechanical depth. Whilst also making it more gamified so that it's more enjoyable overall.

Overhauled behaviour for how raiders flee: The mood for raiders is replaced by 'Morale' which, similarly to mood, is affected by a variety of factors depending on the current situation and is specific to every raider. If a raider's morale gets low enough to break the threshold of a minor mental break risk, then the raider will get a notable debuff as their nerves takes over. If morale breaks the threshold for a major mental break risk, then the raider will flee after a certain grace period. The morale, mental break thresholds and grace period before fleeing of any raider would be visible to the player. These stats would be affected by traits, faction type, status and thoughts that are entirely mechanically separate to the ones for mood. Some examples include the wimp trait giving a much smaller grace period and higher break thresholds for raiders, tribal raiders facing less morale penalties from other raiders dying (to compensate for their differing raid tactics), raiders with better stats and equipment gaining a morale boost and raiders gaining a massive morale penalty once roughly half of them have died (to emulate their current in-game behaviour for retreating).

Addition of Raid Intent: Each raid now has an intent that is shown alongside the raid message. This can range from general sabotage to going after a specific item/resource or simply wanting to kill every colonist present and raze the entire colony. These intents influence the behaviour of the raiders and their victory condition for the raid. If say the raid intent was to steal an item and they successfully stole it, then the entire raid will immediately retreat. What intent a raid is given is influenced by the faction type, faction relation and faction ideoligion. For example, pirates will almost always raid with the intent to steal or kidnap. Factions that you have a particularly bad relation with are more likely to raid you for the sake of sabotage or razing your colony. Factions with the high life meme will often target drugs. Factions with the loyalist meme will often target taking back prisoners/converts of their faction. Etc.

Raiders are less omnipotent: Raiders no longer have expert vision of the entire colony. Instead of beelining towards your pawns and buildings, they now approach the general area that your colony is in and will engage anything they can find. This means that with elaborate enough strategy and colony layout, it's possible to ambush a raid or completely avoid being found. Raiders going after a specific item will also search around your colony to find it instead of already knowing it's location (unless they got info about its whereabouts before the raid, but this opens up the possibility for you to dupe them instead). If it takes them too long, they might even give up the entire raid. The same is true for raids that try to kill/kidnap every colonist. If your pawns can simply avoid being found long enough then they might get away.

New types of raids: Technically already a feature in vanilla, these are slightly different versions of normal raids to make the playthrough a little more interesting. These unique raids include ransoms, where you can give the raiders something to avoid the raid. Drug raids by addicts, which only occur if you got the specific drug. Raids by a single person from a friendly faction, encouraging you to capture and release them for goodwill. And multi-pronged assaults consisting of multiple smaller raids in sequence. There are also some new raid types or events that directly encourage you to go on the offensive. This includes enemy caravans or unrelated raiders passing through your map alongside raiders that arrived too early and will call off their raid if you attack them prematurely.

More meaningful preparation and distinguished roles for raiders: Raiders will now actually make use of preparation time by discussing strategy and hyping each other up, giving them a major morale boost. If you instead ruin their preparation by attacking early and forcing an assault, the raiders are given a morale penalty that might have them call off the raid entirely. To expand this system even more, there are now additional roles for raiders to have that are designated and strategized during preparation time. This includes lone-wolf raiders that split-off and attack separately to pincer you (potentially even moving earlier than the rest of the raid), combat medics that focus on picking up and healing wounded raiders (giving them a major role with the raiders morale), and leaders that give a morale boost while present but a morale penalty when killed. Some end-game raids might even fill their number with mechanoids squads that operate independently and are always sent first.

[galactipunks]

I was recently exposed to the rabbit hole that is Minecraft horror mods and it honestly really disappointed me. So much so that I thought up my own horror mod in response with some key distinctions to make it feel actually scary:

Be as subtle as possible to the point that the player can't tell whether a mod or a weird glitch is causing the effects. Not only is it scarier to take advantage of the existing horror within vanilla but doing this would really mess with veteran players who know the game in-and-out.

Rely on ambient psychological horror. No jumpscares, no threats, no escalation, not even anything flatly disadvantageous. The mod would just weaponize the player's paranoia against themselves.

Be really nefarious as to take full advantage of the insane adjustability that Minecraft has with all its internal options, gamerules and mechanics as well as use the player's acquaintance of the game against them. It should be a horror idea that could only work within Minecraft.

So here's the idea I got from all of this (mind you, I have no idea if a mod like this already exists):

Every in-game day there's a 5% chance (3% if you slept with a bed) for an event to occur from this mod. This chance is fixed and never changes. When an event occurs, its chosen randomly from a very exhaustive list of different events and (depending on what type of event it is) will either occur once or persist until the next event. The likelihood of every event is identical. So this system for pulling them is entirely static and random. Additionally, the chance is rolled again whenever an event occurs. Meaning there's an incredibly low chance for you to experience two or more events in the same day.

So what do these events do? Well, they're designed to mess with the player in the most subtle ways possible. Often specifically targeting their memory, understanding of game mechanics and overall familiarity with Minecraft. The intended effect is to give the player a creeping sense of powerlessness in a sandbox game that they are otherwise completely in control over. Some possible events could be:

Hearing a sound effect in the distance from a source that isn't real.

Having an item currently in a chest/furnace change its amount or position.

Replacing a current painting sprite with another one of the same size.

Having a door/trapdoor be activated (i.e. opened if it was closed and closed if it was opened).

Skipping a full day from sleeping rather than just the night.

Having a specific gamerule temporarily change from its default value until the player triggers it (with minor adjustments to make it less apparent. For example still having the player drop their inventory upon death when keepInventory is toggled on but having the items despawn near instantly unless another player was nearby).

Having a tamed/trusting mob despawn (but only if the player had not interacted with them or been near them for a while).

Surviving otherwise fatal damage or dying from otherwise near-fatal damage.

Randomly changing the difficulty or local difficulty (without it being visible in the options or the debug screen).

Randomly changing slime chunks.

Randomly changing the moon phase.

The list goes on.

These are not notable events but that's the point. The intended effect is to confuse the player and make them doubt themselves without ever thinking that a mod is responsible. To make things even more nefarious, you could have this mod be disguised as a typical QoL mod and sneak it into modpacks to really mess with people.

This is the kind of horror that I think suits Minecraft best. Not the loud, overt, in-your-face kind of horror. But the kind that has you slowly begin to doubt yourself and the world around you. No escalation, no climax, no resolution. Just you left alone to consume yourself out of your own paranoia.

[galactipunks]

Anyone here remember Noobs vs Zombies Tycoon 2?

Well, most likely you have no idea what I'm even talking about. NvZT2 was a niche incomplete Roblox game with a playerbase that only hovered around or under 100 people (from what I remember). It wasn't great, had quite a few flaws and was too ambitious to ever succeed on a platform like Roblox. But despite that, I think about it more often than most good games I played from my decade on the platform. Which is largely thanks to how it utilized one of the most criminally underused genre concepts in gaming.

NvZT2 was a RTS/Team shooter fusion. Each team consisted of around two dozen people with one playing as the RTS leader and the rest playing a pretty standard, slightly MOBA-esque, team shooter. On paper, this is a fantastic concept. One of the biggest problems I find the RTS genre to have is lack of replayability and onboarding due to how competitively focused it can feel. Having the RTS aspect be combined with a regular shooter could nullify that issue entirely. Players could end up not feeling as pressured to do everything right since their team can correct mistakes, there's a greater sense of reward from playing well thanks to the multiplayer aspect and the inherent unbalance of a 24v24 game encourages you to not take the game as competitively as you would otherwise.

Here's the big problem though: Designing a game with this genre in mind is extremely tricky. Not only are you effectively designing and balancing two games at once, but you're also designing and balancing them to work together in a way that's largely unprecedented. This is where NvZT2 messed up most, as its design and balancing resulted in the team shooter aspect being much more fun and engaging than the RTS aspect. As a result, playing RTS felt like drawing the short straw for the rest of the team. Which in Roblox terms equated to the RTS player often leaving mid-round or being too inexperienced, dooming the round. The best solution to this problem would likely only come after rigurous playtesting and experimentation, so I won't act like I know the solution here.

NvZT2 didn't end up being a big success. So how about we try to make another game like it (that's also not on Roblox)? I think the best place to start conceptually would be to take a classic RTS game like C&C or AoE, add team shooter multiplayer into it and then work out the rest through a lot of experimentation. Obviously plenty of things would have to be changed immediately to make it work, but there's also plenty of stuff that would work immediately thanks to the RTS aspect. The trickiest part would be to make the two halves work together simultaneously. Both sides would need to support and rely on each other without becoming too self-functional or dependent. There should also be ways for the two halves to intersect, maybe by letting players on the shooter aspect recruit their own units or letting the RTS player directly influence other players as if they were units. Most important of all however, it needs to be fun. RTS and team shooters don't exactly have much of an overlapping audience, so a lot of work would have to be done to make sure both halves appeal to both audiences. The RTS aspect needs to be meaty enough to satisfy a regular RTS player but simple enough for a non-RTS player to enjoy it. While the shooting aspect needs to complement the RTS aspect but still be fun enough on its own that a regular FPS player would want to play it.

NvZT2 is not the only game I've seen that has taken a crack at this genre (and broader multiplayer Strategy/Shooter fusions as a whole). But it's the closest game I've seen to pulling off a multiplayer RTS/Shooter fusion well. The gaming industry right now is in big need of some groundbreaking experimental genres and this is a good pick for that. So I wish everything could align for something like this to be realized in its full potential.

[galactipunks]

Third (and last) evil homebrew D&D sci-fi TTRPG mechanic thing that I'll talk about (in relation to the RPG stuff, I still plan to talk about the setting in more detail later): All the combat related stuff.

This intersects the most with the setting and thus contains most of the stuff that's difficult to borrow and implement elsewhere. A lot of these mechanics are pretty disparate, so I'll cover them in order of how easily they can be put into D&D and other TTRPGs.

First, let's talk about some general combat mechanics. A simple one would be to have Damage over Time and turn-based effects go by the round rather than the turn. Not only would this be cool in having these effects be more dynamic, but it would also make initiative more interesting as round order becomes much more important. Another one is a "Last Stand" mechanic. Where if you fall to 0 health, you get one last action during your turn before you're knocked out. Taking any further damage while in Last Stand or going below -10% max health would immediately override it and knock you out like normal. Instant death would also override Last Stand by default. Last one I'll bring up is an overhaul of death saving throws. Basically, death saving throws while unconscious are now optional and succeeding them makes you no longer unconscious. But failing any death saving throw or being knocked out in certain conditions puts you into a new state called near-death. Being in this state converts death saving throws back to how they usually work, except you only need one failed roll to die.

Now onto the more setting-specific combat mechanics. A big point about the sci-fi setting I envision is that non-lethal weapons would be the dominant form of weaponry, with modern day lethal weapons like firearms and blades becoming largely obsolete thanks to technological advancements. As such, damage types would be split into three categories that affect how you're knocked out:

Safe: Being knocked out from these makes you go unconscious. Plasma, shock, force and other common damage types from weaponry fall into this category. While the least dangerous damage category, it is the most prevalent and least affected to armour.

Dangerous. Being knocked out from these makes you enter near-death. Acid, burn, electricity, asphyxiation and other environmental damage types would fall into this category. These would mostly happen during non-combat interactions as to make the risk of death feel ever-present. Luckily, they can be effectively resisted by proper armour.

Fatal. Any hit from fatal damage types is either likely or guaranteed to give the debuff "Fatally Wounded" which causes massive and worsening non-combat penalties while also ensuring you enter near-death the moment you're knocked out. The only way to remove Fatally Wounded is through specific healing sources. Very scary to encounter, but can be blocked almost entirely by the right armour. Mainly caused by old-tech weaponry like firearms, knives and swords.

It's important to mention that armour in this setting would largely come from shields, which act like a second health bar rather than increasing your armour class. The only way to increase armour class is from cover, dodging or using the very few non-shield armours still present (which generally only work against fatal damage types). Shields would come in two flavours: Slim (covering the body in a protective sheen) or full-body (bubble shields). Former splits damage 50/50 between the shield's health and the character while latter absorbs all damage but completely disables your armour class and makes melee attacks impossible. (Which would go both ways.) Shields would differ in their health, maximum duration and how effectively they absorb damage types.

Now comes the fun stuff: The weaponry. Be mindful that this list is abridged, incomplete and entirely conceptual. Also, it only covers non-ship weaponry. In fact, everything that I've just said only covers non-ship combat. Ship combat would still be very dangerous and still use big heavy lethal armaments like rockets, railguns, particle accelerators and more.

Plasma guns - Typical sci-fi blasters. They're the boring but effective workhorse.

Kinetic accelerators - Like particle accelerators except they charge up a kinetic blast a. la. the gravity gun from Half-Life 2. Do little damage but push and disorient enemies incredibly well, making them very potent support weapons.

Guns and blades - Like they are in our reality, except illegal! Wouldn't be used by most people because of that (and also because they can be very easily countered). The only exception would be SWAT/Spec-Ops teams using shotguns with non-lethal rounds like including electrically charged slug rounds .

Environmental weapons - Any weapon that makes use of environmental damage types. Most of these are very prototype-ish and also illegal because they're chemical weapons. Those that aren't illegal still occupy a gray-zone of whether or not they constitute as inhumane. These range from lasers that microwave enemies, portable tesla coils to corrosion guns to break through metal and more.

EMP weaponry - The new war-crime weaponry. This is a setting very reliant on electricity and as such EMPs have become so inhumanely dangerous that they're entirely banned and considered a WMD. A strong enough EMP weapon could disable the air ventilation in an entire space colony or permanently injure/kill cyborgs/cybernetics in really nasty ways. These almost never appear, and would be a very big thing if they did. Since EMPs don't affect humans by default, they would deal damage contextually.

Lightning swords - The replacement for swords now that they're illegal and obsolete. Effectively just a sword with the sharp side blunted and instead charged with electricity to shock and incapacitate enemies when struck. Pretty much every bladed weapon has a lightning sword alternative. They give off an intimidating glow and brush discharge and produce a minor shock wave when struck.

Power gloves - Lightning swords but for unarmed combat. These charge up physical strikes to similarly shock and incapacitate enemies. The difference though is that these let you backhand slap someone across an entire room because they're able to launch people. They also produce a brush discharge like lightning swords and a minor shock wave when striking. Because they require electricity, they also need to be charged, so there are quite a few variations depending on what balance you want between battery life and power.

Lastly, let's talk about the stuff I didn't cover. In the original post that started this madness; I mentioned mechanics like ship combat, an overhaul of classes and a complete overhaul of combat. I won't talk about any of that yet. I don't have a good enough grasp over D&D/TTRPG combat and balancing to feel like I can actualize them right now. But considering I brought them up, I might as well give the pitches that summarize my current thoughts and plans:

Ship Combat: Literally just ripped straight from FTL and then reverse-engineered into working in a TTRPG. The FTL influence would mainly come from how ship damage is semi-compartmentalized with each room having individual health and statuses that affect how they work. Balancing, weapons and general feel would be entirely different though and there'd be a bunch of new stuff that makes the system much more complicated to think about. Like ship movement on a grid that affects which side of the enemy ship you can attack, ships being able to have multiple floors and the ability to use carrier ships.

Class Overhaul: I plan for these to be thematical overhauls first and then slowly worked into functional overhauls as I get a better understanding of what I want each class/subclass to be. One notable change that I wanted was with how subclasses and multiclassing worked. Basically, every 5th level would act as a "breakthrough" level that has you either pick a subclass, master one of your subclasses (basically gaining their strongest feature) or pick a new class. The intent is a balance where focusing on one subclass makes you super powerful in their field but spreading your classes/subclasses evenly instead gives you incredible synergy potential at the cost of having to find the powerful stuff yourself. There are also some classes that I thought up which are worth mentioning: Captain, a jack of all trades class that can be specialized further into that role or made more into a support. Infiltrator, a stealth class that'd have a unarmed CQC-centric subclass. Negotiator, a bard replacement who'd have the unique ability to demoralize, disarm and convert enemies in combat. And lastly Assault, a very aggressive class with a subclass entirely designed the "Last Stand" mechanic that I discussed earlier.

Combat Overhaul: Stance-based combat. You pick a stance at the start of your turn which determines what actions, how you roll and how you respond to being attacked. What stance you'd have access to would entirely depend on what class/subclass you're playing. This is a mechanic that would bloom very late into creation but could work incredibly well if everything clicked together right.

That's about the last I have to say with this. I want to explore stuff that isn't TTRPG related now. Please brain, I want my freedom back.

[galactipunks]

Second evil homebrew D&D mechanic thing that I thought up because I wanted to make an entire sci-fi TTRPG before realizing that's too much for me: DICE ROLLS

This is likely going to feel like a pretty petty overhaul in comparison to alignment, and that's because it is! I don't like ability/skill checks in D&D for petty reasons. Specifically, I really dislike how the system is so heavily built around the d20 yet feels designed to make the d20 less impactful the stronger you get as modifiers completely overtake things. This wouldn't be enough to ruin it, but the existence of critical rolls (a genuinely great mechanic by itself) and the fact that roll outcomes in roleplay are dynamic rather than being binary completely messes the system up. In the worst case scenario, positive modifiers can become so ludicrous that anything but a 1 means success, the impact of seeing the big 20 number ceases to exist because characters are rolling numbers well above it and it becomes impossible to immediately understand what outcome you rolled because you have to go through every modifier that's active and also process what it looks like to roll a 26.

So, how about we make up a system where you calculate modifiers first, then roll? Well, it's time to mash two TTRPGs together. This is probably not the cleanest way of adding this, but it's the one I went with. Also, this is only for ability/skill checks because I have no idea how to translate this over to combat rolls or saving throws and I'm fine with how D&D handles those.

First of all, d20 is gone. We use a d100 now for these rolls. Secondly, modifiers are calculated prior to the roll and added together to form a "Modifier Value" which is restricted to the range of -10 to +20. Thirdly, outcomes are now pre-defined with 10 different possible outcomes that are split 50/50 between failure outcomes and success outcomes. These range in intensity from minor, medium, major, massive to cataclysmic/tremendous (this last intensity is very unique and I'll go over it later).

How this comes together is like this: You calculate your modifiers and add them together into a single value, roll the d100 and then see what outcome you get depending on the roll and your modifier. The value interval for each possible outcome depends entirely on the modifier value. Here's the full table of every interval for every modifier value:

It's horrible and I love it

Now, you can roll the dice first and calculate modifiers and see what outcome you get after. But this system is intentionally designed so you can have the roll be the last thing you do in determining your outcome. Would this system be better than the d20 and not make the game more cumbersome? No clue!!!

There is one BIG positive with this system though and that's how advantage/disadvantage is overhauled. Rather than having you roll twice and pick the higher/lower roll, they now "push" the outcome up or down in intensity respectively. So if you had a minor success with advantage, it'd become a medium success. If you had a medium success with disadvantage, it'd become a minor success. If you had a minor success with disadvantage, it'd become a minor failure. What's more important though is that they can now stack to become Major Advantage/Disadvantage. These do the same, but push the outcome twice as far. So a medium success with major advantage would become a massive success. Major advantage/disadvantage cannot stack with normal advantage/disadvantage, but it can stack with itself to become a guaranteed success/failure.

Lastly, let's talk about the very unique outcomes of Catastrophic Failure and Tremendous Success. These work differently from normal outcomes in that they are not achievable through normal means at all. The only way to get them is to either have a very high/low modifier value and roll very high/low, or push an outcome into them through advantage/disadvantage. Because of this, their effects are deliberately insane and unbalanced. Tremendous Success is not only a guaranteed success against literally anything (including actions that literally break reality) but also makes the character auto-succeed in every future roll related to that action for the rest of the scenario. While Catastrophic Failure produces not only an absolute worst possible outcome, but punishes the character in a way that's deliberately meant to infuriate either the DM or player controlling them (I'm talking really mean stuff like having the character's equipment literally break and be permanently removed from their inventory). While this may sound very extreme, there would be the caveat that players/DM must always know if they can roll these outcomes or not. This means that you're told beforehand that these outcomes are possible and it is an active choice by you to roll for them regardless.

So how exactly would all of this work in practice? I don't know! I haven't tried it in practice! This system was originally designed to work together with a setting-specific overhaul of abilities and skills, but you could definitely just add it into regular D&D without changing anything else and see if it works. I likely won't go over those change to abilities and skills, as they're pretty minor and just related to porting D&D stuff into a sci-fi setting. The only real interesting aspect was cybernetics, which acted as ability "limit breaks" that would let you get insanely high stats in them at the caveat of being super rare and expensive. They also carried unique resistances/vulnerabilities, had to be attuned to and had a soft limit that required you to become a full-on cyborg through a brain cybernetic if you wanted to get more of them. There'd also be no "loss of humanity" mechanic with cybernetics because that STINKS and their appearance is completely up the player/DM, with the only caveat being that very strong cybernetics had to be very blatantly visible for balancing reasons. If any of this sounds interesting, try it! It'd be really cool to actually see someone use these systems I've come up so they can discuss every way in which they're flawed. I really need some stress-testing for these ideas. I still have not played any D&D myself.

[galactipunks]

Alright so update on the situation: I was correct in that I don't have enough time and energy to fully realize this.

Luckily, I wrote down a lot of the non-setting stuff that I had already thought out and could use in regular D&D or other TTRPGs. (I'll go into that stuff in more detail later.) I also made the very enlightening choice to actually look up and read into existing sci-fi TTRPGs rather than go through the entire process of making my own. And my mind has sort of drifted into thinking about another game concept that I want to share in the future. Basically, I'm satisfied with what I did with this concept and am not particularly interested in working on it further for the moment. Let's actually talk about what I have come up with now.

It's important to mention that I've yet to write down a lot of the stuff regarding the setting specifically since that's kind of hard to plan out when I don't know what game I'm working within. I'll get it done soon. In the mean time, I want to talk about some general homebrew game mechanics that you could probably put into regular D&D no problem. For this post, that'll be alignment.

I don't like how D&D handles alignment. It's pretty versatile in how you can interpret it but it's too focused on clear right/wrong to work in realistic scenarios. To remedy this, I've opted to not only overhaul the existing nine alignments but also add two new mechanics to give the system more depth and fluidity. Those mechanics are called Alignment Fluidity and Alignment Quirks and I'll go more into them later. I'll cover over the overhauled nine alignments first.

The New Nine Alignments

These are all designed to fit the grid structure of the original nine alignments as each new one is a direct replacement for an old one. Here's a visual aid for what I'm talking about:

Idealistic Altruistic (IA): Idealistic Altruists act selflessly out of principle for a reason greater than themselves that they may or may not understand.

Transient Altruistic (TA): Transient Altruists act, or aspire to act, selflessly by nature with seldom regard over their reasoning behind it.

Nonsensible Altruistic (NA): Nonsensible Altruists are willing to commit acts they deem immoral if it promotes an ulterior moral cause.

Idealistic Utilitarian (IU): Idealistic Utilitarians prioritize greater practical net positives over adhering to their internal morality or ideological beliefs.

True Utilitarian (TU): True Utilitarians vary wildly in how they perceive morals but share an equal inability to define their own morals.

Nonsensible Utilitarian (NU): Nonsensible Utilitarians operate on very flexible and varied moral codes that they will happily ignore should it become inconvenient to them.

Idealistic Egoistic (IE): Idealistic Egoists act selfishly, potentially with elaborate motivations and beliefs, to benefit themselves or their kind.

Transient Egoistic (TE): Transient Egoists act selfishly by instinct, whether they want to or not.

Nonsensible Egoistic (NE): Nonsensible Egoists act selfishly out of spite due to strong emotions, internalized dogma and/or a hostile perception of reality.

There's a lot I could talk about with each of these. Like, honestly, each one could get its own post in what I exactly mean and envision with it. Problem is that it also means I can't easily summarize my views on each of them, so I won't discuss them in-depth here.

Alignment Fluidity

Alignment Fluidity is meant as an in-game way for characters to change their alignment throughout a campaign. Characters now pick both a "Primary Alignment", reflecting their alignment as their idealized selves, and a "Secondary Alignment", reflecting their alignment at their worst or the alignment that they previously followed. Primary and secondary alignment must be from different rows (i.e. both can't be altruist, utilitarian or egoist) unless it's True Utilitarian, which also acts as the default secondary alignment for all characters as it's meant to reflect an inability to understand your own moral code.

Whether the character adheres more to their primary or secondary alignment is handled through a scale of 1 to 9. Higher values means more adherence to primary alignment and lower values means more adherence to secondary alignment. Characters start at a value between 4 to 6 and will move up or down the scale depending on whether their actions fit more with their primary (higher on the scale) or secondary /lower on the scale) alignment. (In-game, this would be decided by the DM and potentially the player). The difficulty of moving in one direction on the scale would increase exponentially the further you got into it, forcing the character to double down in their alignment if they want to reach either extremes. However, there's good incentive to do so. As reaching a fluidity of 2 or lower lets you turn your secondary alignment to your primary alignment (moving you instantly to a fluidity of 7 in the process) and lets you pick an entirely new alignment to be your secondary one. Likewise, if you stay at a fluidity of 8 or higher for an extended period of time, you get to pick a new secondary alignment.

Alignment Quirks

Alignment Quirks is a mostly optional addition to this system and also the most the most player-controlled. They act as alignment asterisks, letting you add your own exceptions or extra rules to how a character's alignment works. This could consist of amplifying or nullifying the effect of certain actions on alignment fluidity, having characters operate on a different alignment for just one specific thing and more. There's generally no rules here in regards to what you could have quirks be, how many you can have and whether or not they can change mid-campaign. It's just recommended to keep things reasonable as to not make things too hard for the other players. The only real rule with quirks is that roleplay can nullify their effects depending on the context of the quirk.

So what exactly is the point of all this?

The main goal with this system is twofold:

Make alignment much more dynamic and fluid to better allow for moral ambiguity, as well as make it possible for characters to smoothly develop and change their morality throughout a campaign.

To make things that would otherwise entirely rely on player roleplay into gameplay mechanics as to make them easier, encourage players to try them and give them a sense of accomplishment that otherwise wouldn't be there.

Simply put, this is a system designed so you can have an entire character arc develop by happenstance without having to overthink your characters alignment and plan stuff out ahead. Thanks to this system, you could spontaneously have an arc about an antagonist learning to overcome their hatred and strive towards being a nice person, a person experiencing anomy as their perception of morality becomes broken or someone stuck between the past and present learning to meld the two together and find a new identity to live by. All of these things are obviously still possible without this system, but the point is that this systems makes those things into gameplay-mechanics rather than being entirely reliant on roleplay. That's the entire reason why D&D is built like it is

[galactipunks]

I lost

Actual internal debate I've had recently:

"Hmmmm... I want something relaxing for my mind to fantasize about, but I got so much stuff coming up and I'm so busy right now. It's best if it's something easy and simple-" "Well, you had that old idea for a space ship combat game and you worked a bit on the setting like half a year ago. Let's implement that setting into D&D." "What?" "Yeah! And while you're at it, why not change some of the things you don't like about D&D?" "I've never even played D&D and how could I ever actualize this idea if I start really liking it like what is the end goal here" "Don't care. Think up an overhaul of stats and other character design elements to fit a sci-fi setting. Also overhaul the dice roll system and combat while you're at it." "PLEASE STOP I NEED TO HAVE CONCEPTS THAT I CAN ACTUALLY SUMMARIZE INTO UNDERSTANDABLE DOCUMENTS AND MAKE THEM DOABLE LIKE THIS WOULD TAKE SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT AND ENERGY AND I HAVEN'T EVEN PLAYED D&D. "I DON'T CARE. IMPLEMENT A WELL-THOUGHT AND INTRICATE SETTING DESIGNED TO BE ENGAGING, EASILY REPLAYABLE AND ABLE TO ACCOMODATE ALL PLAYERS WITH ENDLESS DEPTH ALSO MERGE THE SPACE SHIP COMBAT GAME CONCEPT WITH THIS ONE AND THEN ALSO MAKE 10 COMPLETELY ORIGINAL CLASSES WITH MULTIPLE SUBCLASSES FOR EACH INCLUDING COMPLETELY NEW COMBAT MECHANICS FOR D&D ULTIMATELY CREATING A SETTING THAT IS APPLICABLE FOR ALL TYPES OF MEDIA AND A TTRPG CONCEPT SO EXHAUSTIVE IT'D PROBABLY NEED 2-3 HANDBOOKS"

Like I've genuinely never played D&D but now I'm so invested in this concept and like it so much that I'm thinking about buying D&D rulebooks so I can work it out more like what is with me

[galactipunks]

Actual internal debate I've had recently:

"Hmmmm... I want something relaxing for my mind to fantasize about, but I got so much stuff coming up and I'm so busy right now. It's best if it's something easy and simple-" "Well, you had that old idea for a space ship combat game and you worked a bit on the setting like half a year ago. Let's implement that setting into D&D." "What?" "Yeah! And while you're at it, why not change some of the things you don't like about D&D?" "I've never even played D&D and how could I ever actualize this idea if I start really liking it like what is the end goal here" "Don't care. Think up an overhaul of stats and other character design elements to fit a sci-fi setting. Also overhaul the dice roll system and combat while you're at it." "PLEASE STOP I NEED TO HAVE CONCEPTS THAT I CAN ACTUALLY SUMMARIZE INTO UNDERSTANDABLE DOCUMENTS AND MAKE THEM DOABLE LIKE THIS WOULD TAKE SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT AND ENERGY AND I HAVEN'T EVEN PLAYED D&D. "I DON'T CARE. IMPLEMENT A WELL-THOUGHT AND INTRICATE SETTING DESIGNED TO BE ENGAGING, EASILY REPLAYABLE AND ABLE TO ACCOMODATE ALL PLAYERS WITH ENDLESS DEPTH ALSO MERGE THE SPACE SHIP COMBAT GAME CONCEPT WITH THIS ONE AND THEN ALSO MAKE 10 COMPLETELY ORIGINAL CLASSES WITH MULTIPLE SUBCLASSES FOR EACH INCLUDING COMPLETELY NEW COMBAT MECHANICS FOR D&D ULTIMATELY CREATING A SETTING THAT IS APPLICABLE FOR ALL TYPES OF MEDIA AND A TTRPG CONCEPT SO EXHAUSTIVE IT'D PROBABLY NEED 2-3 HANDBOOKS"

Like I've genuinely never played D&D but now I'm so invested in this concept and like it so much that I'm thinking about buying D&D rulebooks so I can work it out more like what is with me

[galactipunks]

Idea for an EVIL life simulation game where you KILL PEOPLE and TAKE OVER THEIR BODIES

Actually, it's not exactly a life simulation game. That's the closest genre to the idea, but the actual design concept is pretty syncretic with inspirations from survival games, puzzle games, immersive sims, etc. The quick pitch for this game concept is that you play as an eldritch shapeshifting monster that has been stranded on earth and has to survive for roughly a month by taking over the bodies of random people and feeding off them. While also making sure no one notices what is happening by masking as the person you took over.

Although you're certainly more powerful than any human, you're also in a very hostile climate unlike your home and will require almost constant sustenance to keep yourself alive. Your biggest threat is not being killed or captured but rather your own psyche: Sanity acts as your health and you lose it by not properly masking your true self and/or having people catch on to you. You don't need to sleep, eat or excrete like a human but instead have your own mental needs that need to be catered to as to keep your sanity from dropping further. Having lower sanity makes it harder to mask yourself and losing all sanity will make you completely unable to keep yourself together, ending the game.

To keep your mental needs catered and your physical being functional, you need to take over the bodies of other people and consume them from the inside. But in doing so, you're forced to mimic their lives to make sure that people don't catch on to what is happening. What this means wildly ranges depending on who you take over, with each identity providing a slightly different experience. Whoever you take over will ultimately be killed once you leave their body and enter another one. Potentially causing a cascade of problems. Even if you act out of place, most random people will not be bothered too much. But those who do take notice may begin to catch on and realize what is happening. Becoming the closest thing to an antagonist: Conspiracy theorists that think a Lovecraftian alien just landed on earth and is killing people. They don't have expertise or resources but plenty of dedication to make sure your life becomes as a difficult as possible. Locking down areas through surveillance and making people more wary of suspicious behaviour.

The main goal with these mechanics is to create a gameplay loop of constant deterioration as you slowly approach the point where you'll be able to return home. You'll have to make constant sacrifices and tough decisions while seeing your options slowly dwindle due to decreasing sanity and people catching on. That being said, there would be RPG mechanics and a progression system to make you more capable and better able to mask yourself. The scope would be fairly limited since it's a concept that could very easily suffer from feature-creep. And there'd be plenty of themes that you could explore with this concept, but it's best discussing those and other more detailed aspects at a later point.

[galactipunks]

Someone should make a FNAF fan-game that also doubles as an Ace Attorney-style VN where you sue the pizzeria and the more you fuck up during the nights the more you can sue them for

[galactipunks]

Here's a rapid-fire list of some game concepts that I've come up with over the years:

A mining game with extremely in-depth and semi-realistic metallurgy

A VR street fighting game that's basically an unholy fusion between Blade & Sorcery and Yakuza/Like a Dragon

A multiplayer FPS game where your armour is effectively a drivable jet engine and the bulk of the gameplay is about sliding and drifting at insane speeds while trying to shoot other people

A Grand Strategy/4X game about managing a criminal organization through the entire 20th century

A building sim where you manage a ski-resort during both the winter and summer season

None of these concepts have been really thought out too much. Either because the core idea is so simple that I can't really expand upon it or because the core idea is so complex that I have no idea how to coherently describe it. If you got any idea on how to expand them, go nuts.

[galactipunks]

There's a pretty big game concept I have that I've been slowly chipping away at for the past few months. It's so intricate that I'd probably have to share it through a GDD rather than a single post to properly explain it. So instead of talking about that game concept, I want to talk about a smaller and related concept that I came up with a few days ago. I originally envisioned it as a sort of warm-up to get some experience in certain game design elements which would help with the eventual bigger project. This then ballooned into a concept that can stand by itself and would honestly be pretty easy to actualize. At least compared to other concepts of mine.

The game concept would fall into that weird niche of eccentric 2-4hr long RPG Maker games. If you know; you know. However, the game wouldn't be on the RPG Maker engine since the combat system would be entirely different from that of traditional JRPGs. Best way I could describe the combat system in one sentence would be that of a fusion between YOMI Hustle and isometric turn-based RPGs. Turns would consist of 10-20 real time seconds and the length of all character actions would be calculated in these real time seconds. Whenever a party member becomes actionable, the game pauses and you get infinite time to decide their next move before real time resumes. You would also be able to see what actions the enemies are performing in the next 0.5-1 seconds. This effectively means that an asymmetric frame-perfect real time system replaces the typical back-and-forth turn-based system. Turns would still play a role though, as they would control cooldowns, status effects and more. The intended result is a system that feels much faster and dynamic than turn-based while still allowing for good complexity in a fight.

While the combat system would be entirely different, most of the other RPG elements would be pretty simple and straightforward. Equipment, levelling, items, etc. would all follow the typical RPG Maker format. The only notable diverging element would be skills, which would be available from the start and change via story progression to keep the combat fresh and have it reflect important story beats. There also be a vast selection of skills available to give the player plenty of room for experimentation and creative strategization.

Then there's the non-gameplay aspect of this concept which is mostly it's own thing. Something important to mention is that I think you could take either the gameplay aspect or non-gameplay aspect of this concept and fill in the other half yourself. These two halves of the game stand mostly by themselves and don't need eachother to work. The reason for this is that the non-gameplay aspect gets pretty weird and heavy to a degree that not everyone is comfortable with. Slight content warning ahead, as the story concept gets into some pretty heavy and mature topics.

The story would follow the journey of a contrasting duo that wake up in a dreamlike and ever-expanding reality and try their best to find a way out before they're killed by hostile apparitions (who act as the generic enemy throughout the game.) The setting is meant to feel like a dream in that it's surrealist but sensical. There isn't any explanation behind why things are like they are, but there is consistency in it that the duo will slowly learn and adapt around. Said duo would be the only party members of the game. Consisting of the common trope of an apathetic but determined guy and an optimistic but overly energetic girl. The player's perspective would follow the guy but remain strictly objective and third-person outside of combat. Never giving you insight into their internal thinking/feelings and never showing you anything that they don't see.

With the basic set-up for the story now defined. It's time to throw it all out of the window. Because around 25% through the game, the duo will reach the exit to the reality they're in, fail to escape through it and end up even farther away then when they started. Also, both of them wake up in the other's body. This is now a body swap story and a very unpleasant one at that.

For pretty much the entire rest of the game, the body swap element will dominate the narrative. As the girl, now in the guy's body, will begin to lose herself over gender dysphoria and anger. While the guy, now in the girl's body, has to grapple with the consequences of effectively stealing someone else's body and coming to terms with a wave of complex emotions that have sprung up from it. All while the duo are forced to push themselves back to the exit and adjust their fighting to fit their new body. This section of the game would be harder, heavier, darker and more mechanically in-depth. Pushing the combat system to its most demanding form while exploring both characters and how they react differently to their circumstance.

So, how would the story affect the gameplay? Well, remember how I said how skills would change with story progression? This is what I meant. The guy would start off with a typical close-range bruiser class while the girl would be a basic long-range magic support class. After the body-swap and a few initial rough fights where neither of them have fully adapted, this dynamic is partly flipped and then evolves into something else throughout the rest of the game. The guy, now in the girl's body, becomes a highly aggressive DPS class that utilizes status effects and self-support abilities to make up for lacklustre base stats. While the girl, now in the guy's body, becomes a highly erratic jack-of-all-trades that can seamlessly switch between different stances with unique skills and playstyles.

There are quite a few reasons for why I decided to have the story be like it is. Chief among them is that I find most body swap stories to be kind of creepy in how idyllically and nonchalantly they portray the concept. So I wanted to make a story that takes the body swap narrative at face value and explores how it could affect the psyche of those involved. I also won't deny that I partly wanted the story to be a sort of bait-and-switch. The initial setup is intentionally meant to give the illusion of a cheerful and eccentric JRPG with an unassuming romance and typical body-swap narrative. Only for all of this to be subverted as the story takes a much darker path than anticipated.

[galactipunks]

Here's another idea for a Minecraft mod that I came up with a while ago. Loosely based off the fire mechanics from the Terraria mod Terraria Overhaul, this mod would overhaul the fire and burning mechanics to be more grounded and realistic while also providing greater freedom and depth.

Rather than fire existing and spreading in a binary state, it would be incremental. The fire on any block would begin small and slowly increase in size until it engulfs the entire block and eventually extinguishes itself from having nothing left to burn. A fire's ability to spread and and be extinguished would also change depending on its size. The largest flames would be impossible to stop with just your hands and almost guaranteed to spread to the nearest blocks if they are flammable.

The time and difficulty it would take for a fire to grow, spread and die (by itself or by the player) would depend on what block it is attached to. Planks would be average in all fronts. Logs would be slower to catch fire but harder to die. Coal blocks would make small but extremely pervasive fires. Hay would catch fire extremely easily and die equally fast. Etc. A notable case here would be netherrack and magma blocks. These would still burn forever if lit, but could not catch fire from other burning blocks. Instead, they catch fire instantly from any ember particle, which have entirely different properties in this mod. Rather than being purely visual particles, ember particles are actually able to start fires. Their frequency alongside how far they shoot out of the fire would also depend on the block.

To accompany these changes, how the player and other mobs interact with fire would be overhauled as well. Player and mob burning is now also incremental and ramps up in damage rather than just going away after a while. Damage that could previously cause you to start burning instead just cause burn damage. (Similar to magma blocks.) Take enough burn damage and you will catch fire. The same goes for mobs. And rather than burning in the sun, undead mobs take perpetual burn damage without ever catching fire.

One of the most significant gameplay changes would be with how you extinguish fires. If you try to extinguish a fire with your hands, you just decrease its size a little while taking burn damage (which can ignite you.) This obviously won't work against a larger fire. You have to use stuff like water buckets and splash water potions to extinguish those. To make it even more difficult, fires can now continue inside blocks and have to either be removed or waterlogged to fully extinguish.

To make up for the increased difficulty of managing fires, you would have access to a lot more tools for it. Like fire-proof gloves that let you manually put out fires without taking damage and fire-proof armour that slows you down but makes you almost immune to burn damage. You also have some offensive options like flaming arrows and a new potion that acts as a molotov cocktail. Alongside a portable hose that can be used both as a fire extinguisher and as a flamethrower, depending on what you fill it with.

The main thing I want out of this mod is to make fire in Minecraft feel like fire in real life. A force of nature that is equally destructive and chaotic as it is controllable. One addition that I had which ties into this is that certain blocks would have burnt-down versions that they can turn into instead of diseappearing. So rather than a burnt down house disappearing entirely, it remains somewhat intact in a ruined state. That exact feeling of seeing your in-game home in ruins from a large fire is why I think this mod would be so interesting. Large fires would be almost unstoppable, but it would take an easily stopped small fire to create them. Being on fire would be a cause of panic rather than a nuisance and using fire as a weapon would be much more effective but much riskier. There is so much more you could do with this idea that I didn't even go into.

[galactipunks]

A thought experiment that I have recently started doing is just taking a random game that I like which has absolutely NO subtext or hidden meaning and then trying to bs a philosophical message out of it that is JUST plausible enough to sound believable

Terraria is about the struggle between mankind and nature and how mankind will push itself forward through cultural and technological advancements to face the ever-greater threats that nature poses over it

Spelunky is about how the allure of treasure and greatness can push people to self-destructive acts over and over again in hopes that they will one day get it right and succeed

Geometry Dash is about the innate desire in us to move forward and the difficulties found in doing so

[galactipunks]

Let's talk about flags.

This is a setting where all countries and regional identities are physically extinct. But their presence still remain in the thoughts of those who are left. I already talked in the previous post about how important culture and language would be as a game mechanic. A way that this would be indicated would be how flags are incorporated into the setting.

Flags would be seen as artifacts of bygone times. Relics of an era that has ended. But they would be highly prized because of this exact reason. To wield an intact flag is to show strength and tenacity. Maybe even allegiance to the place the flag is for, although most just use whatever flag they can find. It gives massive legitimacy to the people who hoist it and shows that they should be taken seriously.

How flags would work in-game would reflect this attitude. Having a flag for your group would be seen as an important step in legitimizing their presence and would provide a significant boost to morale. Additionally, if any of your survivors have a culture affiliated with that flag, then they would also gain a morale boost depending on the cultural diversity of your group. The person who carries the flag, the flag-bearer, would also be seen as the leader of the group and thus have access to unique mechanics. The presence of flags in other groups would be a common indicator of them being highly skilled, well-equipped and difficult to convince.

How you obtain a flag would act as a sort of mini main-quest with multiple different options. You could scavenge for an intact flag, make one out of fragmented pieces, make one entirely by yourself, steal one from another group or barter it. The game would pull from a very wide index of flags to include in-game. Including national flags, regional flags, city flags and even flags not tied to Europe like international flags, organizational flags and more. Some flags would be rarer than others to fit their prevalence in real life, although this would have minimal effect on gameplay. There would exist a built-in limit to the amount of different flags you could find in a single playthrough to prevent it from becoming too bloated. But this limit would be pretty relaxed, since two groups having the same flag is seen as disrespectful and likely to cause conflict. There would also exist the option to create your own flag, but this would be risky as new designs don't have any legitimacy and would have to be validated by your actions.

The biggest reason why flags would work like this is to give the game variety and incentive. Working towards getting a flag would be an incremental step that could take up much of the focus in the early-game before the bigger goals are fully established. The wide variety of flags would give each playthrough variety while also letting you set your own goals and challenges. Like hunting after a specific flag or trying to make your own and validate it.

[galactipunks]

The game would have a fairly expansive setting to act as a backdrop for every round. Explaining the different factions that you play as and the reason behind the battles taking place. Most of the information I'm going to talk about here would most likely be reserved for logbooks that you're free to ignore. The setting is also designed so that you could potentially use it for something else than a game. If you find this setting engrossing, don't be afraid to borrow elements from it in your own endeavors. I myself based this setting in some ways of other settings that I liked.

Quick history summary of the setting: Humanity invented Faster-than-light travel and began to colonize the Milky Way. To maintain peace and prosperity in this new age, it was decided that a new intersystem organization similar to the UN should be created. This organization became known as the United Systems (US). However, as humanity's reach expanded, the US slowly became more centralized and gained more control so that it could more effectively achieve its goals. This centralization began to alienate certain star systems to the point that thoughts of secession started circulating. This eventually culminated in a large-scale revolt between the US and the newly-created Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS), in what became known as the Milky War. This war of unprecedented scale and destruction eventually ended with a white peace that saw the CIS prevail and the US seriously weakened and fragmented. The state of the US was worsened further by a political crisis that began shortly after the war. Which saw even more systems and factions split off from the former giant. The present state of the Milky Way is tumultuous and fragile. With the balance of power now split between different factions that are all gaining strength in their own way. What all this preperation will lead to has yet to be seen. But the status quo is bound to change soon.

The setting would consist of chiefly 7 playable factions:

The United Systems (US). Who despite their tremendous loss in recent time are still the largest and most powerful faction in the Milky Way. Led by a council of elected officials, much of their focus is spent on recovering from the devestation of recent conflicts and turmoil. Their ships would be versatile, reliable and the go-to option. Designed so that if they were the only faction playable, the game would still be fun.

The Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS). The second most powerful faction who initiated the Milky War and turmoil that has embroiled the galaxy for decades. Composed of a united front of systems with wildly different ideological positions who all vie for control over eachother and are only unified in mutual hatred of the US. The biggest internal factions of the CIS are national militarists who make up the bulk of the army, democratic republicans who wish to see a traditional presidential democracy and neo-anarchists who want to abolish system-scale politics. Their ships would have wildly different designs and playstyles and would often synergize in weird ways to encourage orthodox teamwork.

The Alliance of Democratic Republics (ADR, or informally Augustus' Realm). The smallest major faction, consisting of systems who pledged alliegance to the exiled US chief general Augustus, who is often considered the person solely responsible for saving the US from completely fracturing in the Milky War. While he leads a democracy, his overwhelming popularity means he practically wields autocratic control. ADR ships would be high-quality and designed for small, experienced crews. Effectively the closest thing to a "competitive" version of ships in this setting.

The Union of InterPlanetary Traders (UIPT). A politically neutral economic alliance of systems that are dominated by interplanetary traders and controlled by trade unions. Technically a break-off from the US, but unique in that their secession was handled diplomatically. Their ships would be easy to use and very similar in design. Effectively meant as the beginner faction for players to learn the ropes of the game.

Independent systems which aren't in any major faction. These would act as a randomized faction that could use most ships from any other faction.

Pirates. Similar to independents but all of their ships would be modified to be more aggressive, mobile and eccentric. Meant as a go-to hostile faction that is equally strong against every other major faction.

Chevekia. Both a political federation and unique identity representing outer-rim and deep space outposts, habitats and stations whose contact with the rest of the galaxy was cut off during the Milky War. Forged out of desperation in an inhospitable environment with the sole goal to persevere, not matter what. Posessing unprecedented collectivism, extreme pragmatism and isolationist nationalism. Chevekia is a culture where everyone contributes to society to their utmost and any form of free will, thinking or expression is forbidden. They perceive all other factions as decadent traitors and only interact with them when necessary. Their ships would be archaic and extremely specialized. Demanding unreasonable amount of teamwork and cooperation and meant to test your skill of the game.

In every round, two of these factions would fight eachother. Each round would also have some introductory text to explain the background of the fight. This could vary from a routine small-scale skirmish between the US and CIS, a UIPT convoy being attacked by pirates or a Chevekian ship responding to an independent drifting a bit too close into their territories. There would be some randomization in these introductory lines to keep them fresh and interesting. There could also exist pre-defined introductions for battles based of in-universe historical events or fights of significant importance.

[galactipunks]

Here's a concept for a multiplayer game that I came up with around 2021. This was (alongside a few other game concepts of mine) originally intended for Roblox since I was still playing that decrepit game back then. Luckily, this is one of the ideas that works perfectly fine outside the context of that exploitative platform.

Elevator pitch: FTL spaceship fights expanded into a full 3D multiplayer game. Two teams consisting of 4-24 players (depending on the size of the ship) fight eachother with one or multiple compartmentalised spaceships. Every spaceship would have both a total durability and local durability. Total durability is simply the health of the ship, and having it reach 0 means the ship is destroyed. While local durability would the durability of the specific room. Deal enough damage to a room that its durability reaches 0 and it breaks down. Deal excessive damage to a room and it could tear off from the ship. Rooms could be repaired back to working condition but their maximum durability would slowly decrease as they take more damage. Rooms that break down entirely would also only work again if fully repaired, while rooms that are torn off would be irreperable. If a room is broken, it slowly decreases the health of anyone inside unless they are in a spacesuit. (Due to lack of proper oxygen and pressure.) Every ship would also feature rooms with special functions. Like turret stations, engine rooms, flight deck, ammunition storage, etc. Breaking or tearing off these rooms would either disable certain features or cause certain effects. Like disabling certain turrets, causing a engine breakdown that renders the ship without power or explodes the entire ship, making the ship immobile, removing the ability to resupply, etc.

The amount of ways available for you to destroy the enemy would depend on the ship you have. Some ships would be faster and thus encourage better manuevering by the captain. Others could feature a stronger shield that blocks better against initial shots and thus encourage a slower, more attrition-based approach. Some ships (especially carriers) would have built-in hangars from which you can fly out in one-person ships to harass, bomb or even board the enemy ship. Some ships would focus more on smaller-caliber battery to overwhelm the enemy shields while others could possess stronger weapons that easily cripple a ship when its shield is down. Your personal equipment would be chosen through a loadout system, and could vary from being focused on maintaining the ship's conditions and weapons to boarding the enemy and planting bombs inside their ship to break them from the inside.

There are some ideas regarding this concept that I've yet to iron out. Mainly the balance between teamwork and individual skill, how the captain/pilot would be chosen, making sure each ship is fun and unique and making it equally fun to maintain your ship as it is to board the enemy. If you have any feedback or comment, feel free to reply.