Initial Reaction

[histgamer]

Would love this feature. Or be able to choose what rocket you want to use on a given mission within certain weight limitations of course.

ORIGINAL: CV60

One feature I would like to see is a "design your own rocket and probe." Possibly you could tie having more complex probes (probes with more scientific gear) would get higher mission points. But that means a heavier probe/less reliable probe and a larger, more complex rocket to lift it. I can add stages or engines, but with an increased cost/decreased reliability trade off. Do I go with more launches using smaller, specialized probes, or do I build an expensive uber probe that might fail in the launch? Then there is the research angle-do I spend the research time trying to get more powerful engines, or do I simply go with proven technology and save time? Another issue that is missing is the time element. In the game, I can simply decide I'm going to fly a mission, and it is assumed that the parts are all on hand, and I can begin assembly immediately. In fact, I need to plan these missions far in advance to stockpile the various parts and get the people trained and prepared. A failure can stop a program in its tracks, years can be lost, as happened with CHALLENGER.

The game has a lot of potential, but I agree that right now it needs to be more challenging for the adult crowd. I'm sure the developers will get there.[:)]

[CV60]

As a hobby, I design, build and fly amateur high-power rockets, so the rocket design aspect has a lot of appeal to me personally. However, I think it could also be a useful teaching program. I've mentored some children and schools in the National Association of Rocketry's "Team America" challenge. What I've found is:

1) Middle School children have little to no idea of the history of the 1950s-1990's space exploration effort
2) They have no idea of the rudimentary steps in doing a engineering or research program. (In fairness, neither did I at their age [:'(]) )

BASPM could address both of these educational issues. Right now, BASPM has the feel of the "Oregon Trail" game. While a fine game (I played it with my kids), it is fundamentally a game for 10 year olds. BASPM is like that right now. IMHO, it needs to be more of a challenge for the adult player. I'm sure it will change and improve, and I believe the pick-your-mission and design your rocket/probe idea would go a long way to making it a great strategy game

[Blind Sniper]

One feature I would like to see is a "design your own rocket and probe."

The game has a lot of potential, but I agree that right now it needs to be more challenging for the adult crowd. I'm sure the developers will get there.

I agree to both!

[CV60]

If a rocket and probe design feature would be implemented, here is what I would like to see:
Probe design characteristics would include the following:

Engines
Fuel
Radar
Communications
Experiments
Robotic Experiments
Sensors

Each probe component would be evaluated for Diameter, weight, reliability and complexity. Each of these characteristics could be improved with research. Manned spacecraft would have the following additional features:

Crew Size
Life Support
Habitability

Increased crew size/life support/habitability would allow for more complex and longer missions, but also would come with weight and space limitations.

Rockets components would be as follows:


Engine Thrust Rating
Engine Physical Size
Fuel
Diameter (Minimum Diameter Rockets go higher/faster for same size engine, but with payload size restrictions)
Stages

Rocket components would be rated for reliability, physical size/capacity. Characteristics could be improved with research

A given payload mass and size would have to
1) Fit on the Rocket
2) The rocket would have to be capable of putting the object into the desired orbit

Associated with this system, a form of project planner software should be part of the project, so gamers can work backwards, establishing their project goals, mission requirements and engineering requirements and development schedule.

[vonRocko]

The game is for ipad. I doubt very much that we will see anything really challenging. You got to keep it simple for the ipod crowd.[:(]

[Kipper]

Alas vonRocko could be right.

My 2 cents, meant constructively. I want a great game. And there is a once-in a generation opportunity for one here, and not just a BARIS clone.

1) Stop the EAP. It will take a lot more than a couple of months to sort this game out, and it is risking a negative vibe that could be hard to shake.

2) Go back and figure out how to inject a bit of fun, excitement and satisfaction. No need to reinvent the wheel, the basics are in BARIS. Build on them. Expand. Find a way to give the player *ownership* of their program by some basic customization ability, not just a series of slide shows that the player passively observes. Playing this game is like playing roulette wearing a blindfold with a picture of a rocket painted on the inside.

3) Spend a year - 18 months doing the above.

4) Drop the artwork intensive design. The art is eating up a lot of effort I would guess, and adds nothing to gameplay.

Sorry if I come across as harsh, but I wish you guys so well, and am rooting for you so hard, I am not about to sit here when my views might, just might, get some thoughts going on what direction to take. And if you disagree with them, well it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.

[Nacho84]

ORIGINAL: Kipper

Sorry if I come across as harsh, but I wish you guys so well, and am rooting for you so hard, I am not about to sit here when my views might, just might, get some thoughts going on what direction to take. And if you disagree with them, well it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.

That's fine. I know you have good intentions and you want the game to do well, so I appreciate your opinion.

All the feedback we got during the past seven days since the EAP started has been invaluable, and I'm quite happy we've decided to go for an EAP, so we can adjust things before the final release and deliver a game that matches what you folks want to play.

I read everything that gets posted on the forums and, even if I don't have the time to answer each and every post, I take notes of everything. The plan is to keep collecting feedback for a couple more weeks and then restructure the roadmap based on it. It's clear that certain things that seemed important to me during the development (e.g., creating a content-intensive game) are not as relevant to players as I thought and it's also clear that the lack of some features which I deemed as unimportant (e.g., being able to mix and match rockets with payloads) are upsetting some of you. Lots of lessons learned in the past seven days, that's for sure. Let us continue gathering feedback for a couple more weeks so that we have more information while restructuring the roadmap.

Cheers,

[histgamer]

CV60 while that would be nice I'm not sure it's necessary to go that detailed. The nice mix that BARIS had in my mind was you could use the Saturn V for Mercury missions if you wanted or you could use a Titan for Apollo missions by adding boosters. You had limits with rockets and you could make a few changes to improve the rocket to expand its ability and you had the ability to choose what rockets you wanted to use for what mission within limits but you didn't have to design the rocket from the ground up.

I'm not sure it's particle at this stage to turn the game into a rocket builder but it would add to the game in my opinion if you had some customization options.

[CV60]

Nacho-I'm not sure that it is an either-or issue, i.e., a content-intensive game vice features such as designing rockets. Rather, I would say that having the design elements adds to the content. Your effort thus far is a good one. Hopefully, this feedback will make it a better one. [:)]

ORIGINAL: Nacho84

ORIGINAL: Kipper

Sorry if I come across as harsh, but I wish you guys so well, and am rooting for you so hard, I am not about to sit here when my views might, just might, get some thoughts going on what direction to take. And if you disagree with them, well it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.

That's fine. I know you have good intentions and you want the game to do well, so I appreciate your opinion.

All the feedback we got during the past seven days since the EAP started has been invaluable, and I'm quite happy we've decided to go for an EAP, so we can adjust things before the final release and deliver a game that matches what you folks want to play.

I read everything that gets posted on the forums and, even if I don't have the time to answer each and every post, I take notes of everything. The plan is to keep collecting feedback for a couple more weeks and then restructure the roadmap based on it. It's clear that certain things that seemed important to me during the development (e.g., creating a content-intensive game) are not as relevant to players as I thought and it's also clear that the lack of some features which I deemed as unimportant (e.g., being able to mix and match rockets with payloads) are upsetting some of you. Lots of lessons learned in the past seven days, that's for sure. Let us continue gathering feedback for a couple more weeks so that we have more information while restructuring the roadmap.

Cheers,

[Nacho84]

ORIGINAL: CV60

Nacho-I'm not sure that it is an either-or issue, i.e., a content-intensive game vice features such as designing rockets. Rather, I would say that having the design elements adds to the content. Your effort thus far is a good one. Hopefully, this feedback will make it a better one. [:)]

Hello CV60,

Your suggestions are really good. I'm not sure we will be able to implement them for the game, though, as they would require some major restructuring. Nonetheless, I'll keep them in mind for future developments.

Cheers,

[Panjack]

It seems like the game needs more meaningful choices for the player. For instance, once you decide to go for a particular mission filling the personal is pretty much just picking the highest rated people in certain abilities and the only real choice after that is whether to wait until the equipment has reached full potential reliability (or not) before you launch. Then you launch and wait for the gods of randomness to do their thing.

It seems equipment needs more dimensions: at the least it seems in addition to reliability it might have safety (so if it fails then the level of safety determines what happens to the astronaut or whether things just explode on the launch pad or something like that). And it would be nice to have the player be presented with an option, say, right after launch to have, in human missions, to have the mission aborted via the setting off of, in the case of mercury, the escape tower. And/or to abort the mission during the countdown if it looks like things are going bad. The decision could be made by having some data presented to the player about probabilities of certain bad events. The penalty for a failure would be less of you abort the mission in a controlled fashion rather than have the rocket/capsule come to an uncontrolled bad end. I understand this might not be possible to introduce in the game at this point, but these sorts of things would make the game more interesting.

On this...shouldn't there be the chance astronauts die?

And why all the screen real estate taken up with silhouettes of people?

[CV60]

I'm glad you like the ideas. If you want to take elements of it that might be more easily ported to the current version, let me know what you are thinking about. I'm sure we can flesh out some ideas on the forum.

Best,

ORIGINAL: Nacho84

ORIGINAL: CV60

Nacho-I'm not sure that it is an either-or issue, i.e., a content-intensive game vice features such as designing rockets. Rather, I would say that having the design elements adds to the content. Your effort thus far is a good one. Hopefully, this feedback will make it a better one. [:)]

Hello CV60,

Your suggestions are really good. I'm not sure we will be able to implement them for the game, though, as they would require some major restructuring. Nonetheless, I'll keep them in mind for future developments.

Cheers,

[Kipper]

ORIGINAL: Panjack

It seems like the game needs more meaningful choices for the player. For instance, once you decide to go for a particular mission filling the personal is pretty much just picking the highest rated people in certain abilities and the only real choice after that is whether to wait until the equipment has reached full potential reliability (or not) before you launch. Then you launch and wait for the gods of randomness to do their thing.

It seems equipment needs more dimensions: at the least it seems in addition to reliability it might have safety (so if it fails then the level of safety determines what happens to the astronaut or whether things just explode on the launch pad or something like that). And it would be nice to have the player be presented with an option, say, right after launch to have, in human missions, to have the mission aborted via the setting off of, in the case of mercury, the escape tower. And/or to abort the mission during the countdown if it looks like things are going bad. The decision could be made by having some data presented to the player about probabilities of certain bad events. The penalty for a failure would be less of you abort the mission in a controlled fashion rather than have the rocket/capsule come to an uncontrolled bad end. I understand this might not be possible to introduce in the game at this point, but these sorts of things would make the game more interesting.

On this...shouldn't there be the chance astronauts die?

And why all the screen real estate taken up with silhouettes of people?

Some really, really excellent ideas here to add a bit of excitement. BARIS did that with the "mission control" red/green line, the failures that might not be mission-terminal, not to mention the "other side's" achievements. Some of the ideas above would have added to BARIS.

[jimmyPx]

I have played the game a bunch and here are my thoughts:

I like the animations and they are cool and really nice.
The core of the game is fun and I've had fun playing it.

Suggestions:

1. You have to have competition or it gets boring. Since you guys don't want to get into the US-USSR Space Race, then have competing Space Agencies like Bill Richguy's Agency that has more money but worse scientists than you and DictatorofSmallCountry Agency that has good scientists and no money. Introduce them at the start with a picture and text of We'll beat you, etc and then every turn have text about what they are doing. Wouldn't be hard or take much development time but would add the competitive "race" that everyone wants.

2. Please separate the Rocket Programs from the Main Programs. This is what happened in real life where Huntsville was in charge of rockets and other groups in charge of the capsule, Lem, or probe. So Instead of having Gemini and the Titan Rocket is included, you have to open the Titan project AND the Gemini project. Or you could decide to go to the Saturn 1 rocket and Gemini, etc.
Then you could have a drop down when you configure a mission with rocket and payload. This would add "fun" because you have to decide which rockets to invest in (and they should be a serious investment in money and R&D).

3. Change stats for astronauts. They need to have strengths and weaknesses and if possible do a BARIS like/dislike bar when putting crews together. For example Gordo Copper was an awesome 4 star pilot but not a good commander at all and would not get along with crewmates. Gene Cernan wasn't as good a pilot but a great leader. You get the picture.

4. I know it's probably not doable at this stage but I would so love a "minigame" where when you launch you are the flight director and get the go-nogo from all of the controllers and you tell capcom go or nogo/abort. That would be so awesome and make your animations mean something and not just a click through after you've seen them 50 times.

Awesome job though and like I said the core game is really well done. You just need to tweak the gameplay some to add fun, excitement, and challange.

[Nacho84]

Hello Jim,

Many thanks for your feedback. We're working on pretty much all the things you mentioned in your post and we'll be making some announcements regarding changes in the roadmap soon.

Please make sure to pop-in and gives us more feedback after a few updates.

Cheers,

[CV60]

Here's an idea: how about deducting points for not completing programs by a certain date? That might be attributable to the "Space Agency that Shall Not Be Named" accomplishing the goal first?

ORIGINAL: Jim Power

I have played the game a bunch and here are my thoughts:

I like the animations and they are cool and really nice.
The core of the game is fun and I've had fun playing it.

Suggestions:

1. You have to have competition or it gets boring. Since you guys don't want to get into the US-USSR Space Race, then have competing Space Agencies like Bill Richguy's Agency that has more money but worse scientists than you and DictatorofSmallCountry Agency that has good scientists and no money. Introduce them at the start with a picture and text of We'll beat you, etc and then every turn have text about what they are doing. Wouldn't be hard or take much development time but would add the competitive "race" that everyone wants.

2. Please separate the Rocket Programs from the Main Programs. This is what happened in real life where Huntsville was in charge of rockets and other groups in charge of the capsule, Lem, or probe. So Instead of having Gemini and the Titan Rocket is included, you have to open the Titan project AND the Gemini project. Or you could decide to go to the Saturn 1 rocket and Gemini, etc.
Then you could have a drop down when you configure a mission with rocket and payload. This would add "fun" because you have to decide which rockets to invest in (and they should be a serious investment in money and R&D).

3. Change stats for astronauts. They need to have strengths and weaknesses and if possible do a BARIS like/dislike bar when putting crews together. For example Gordo Copper was an awesome 4 star pilot but not a good commander at all and would not get along with crewmates. Gene Cernan wasn't as good a pilot but a great leader. You get the picture.

4. I know it's probably not doable at this stage but I would so love a "minigame" where when you launch you are the flight director and get the go-nogo from all of the controllers and you tell capcom go or nogo/abort. That would be so awesome and make your animations mean something and not just a click through after you've seen them 50 times.

Awesome job though and like I said the core game is really well done. You just need to tweak the gameplay some to add fun, excitement, and challange.

[Nacho84]

ORIGINAL: CV60

Here's an idea: how about deducting points for not completing programs by a certain date? That might be attributable to the "Space Agency that Shall Not Be Named" accomplishing the goal first?

This was my original design and, for a previous version of SPM, I even got a campaign mode working where the player was takes with different "objectives" at the start of the game, such as conducting X number of manned missions by certain date, accomplishing a particular set of goals, and things like that. The problem I found with that is that, unless we are a little bit flexible, it was too restrictive for the player, who would be forced to follow pretty much a scripted path.

We can tackle this issue again in a few weeks, once we start working on the campaign mode (and after we redefine the roadmap first!).

Cheers,

[kokubokan25]

IMHO, i think the most important thing to fix in this game it,s the objective (reach the moon), and the different aproaches to catch out. When the game had some paths and variations will be great. Now, because your early state, you only had a path. Different objectives it,s a alternative but the final score must be reach the moon.