The Theory Of

Here you'll find discussion of all manner of topics relating to the theory of multiplayer games. As I see it, anyway. A note to commentors: if you stray off-topic or if your reply contains ad hominem attacks, your comment will be deleted.

Author: JB47394

Star systems become valleys ringed by mountains.  Star bases become towns.  Star gates become mountain passes.  Asteroid belts and ice fields become farmland, water supplies, mines and forests.  Corporations are guilds.

The interesting part comes in when we consider what to do with spaceships.  They aren't like armor and equipment because they do things automatically.  Guns and missiles shoot, shield boosters boost, repair modules repair, and so on.  Also, they can get destroyed while the player character can sneak away.

Ships become NPCs.

Player characters accumulate skills in the ordering of NPCs.  A player character might specialize in the ordering of NPC mages, bowmen or warriors.  Backup skills might involve commanding NPCs that heal or repair equipment on the spot.  If you don't have the skills for managing a certain type of NPC, you can't take that NPC type out into the field.  The more capable the NPC, the more skill it takes to command them.

The building of components for ships becomes the building of equipment for NPCs.  The building of ships becomes the collection of NPCs.  Raw materials are needed to build ships and components, and raw materials would be needed to support the collection of NPCs.  So just like a realtime strategy game, the player character has to use NPCs to collect the materials for more NPCs and their equipment.

In PvE combat, a player character's NPCs battle the environmental NPCs.  Per Eve Online, the player side is much tougher than the environmental side.

In PvP combat, the two sides slug it out for dominion over various valleys throughout the empire.  Controlling a valley means controlling its resources, and that lets players build up their NPC corps.  Skills determine how many NPCs they can command at one time, but the resources determine how many NPCs they have in reserve.

Some NPCs are extremely nasty.  They take so many resources to enlist that no single person could hope to both collect the resources and then control that NPC.  Imagine a mature dragon or some such beast.  To enlist a dragon requires a huge raft of resources, and it also takes a very skilled player character to make sure the dragon does what it's told.  Off to battle, and the dragon steps on the slower enemy NPCs, but may have some trouble with the smaller, faster enemy NPCs.  (Yes, this matches the general balance in Eve Online).

In this fantasy treatment of Eve Online there are no levels, no classes.  Players spend their time using collector NPCs to directly gather resources or using combat NPCs to kill off monsters on quests offered by the king's bureaucracy in order to get the monster resources and rewards from the king's emissaries.  Once player characters have enough resources, they can enlist NPCs of various capabilities and mixes according to their player character's cumulative skills.  Or just add to their guild's reserve force of NPCs.  And then they can jump into the battle for domination of all valleys and their resources.  Or they can devote their efforts to continuing to go on quests.

To ensure that only specific NPC combinations are permitted (permutations of ship equipment are limited), a player character might have to enlist a foreman NPC that ultimately limits what the player character can and cannot do with the NPCs that actually do the dirty work.

For those not familiar with Eve Online, there is a vast central tract of valleys (star systems) that are ruled by the king (the empire).  The king's guards (the empire police) ensure that peace is enforced.  So that's where everyone starts in order to build up a little bit of wealth and familiarity with the systems before joining a guild (corporation) and starting to slug it out with the other guilds.

The guilds base themselves in outlying valleys, and can control as many valleys and build as many towns as the valleys that they control will support.  The NPCs don't do anything without a player character commanding them through his foreman NPC, so it's not like one player can be running multiple valleys.

That's a take on transporting the game system of Eve Online to the fantasy realm.  I'm not a big fan of PvP, and the limitations inherent in Eve Online's systems resulted in boredom for me after about 2 months.  However, for those interested in a game without levels or classes (per se), this fantasy treatment of Eve Online suggests how things can be rebalanced to keep game play entertaining.