- Gameplay -
Essentially, take the best attributes of Ultima online and put them into a StarTrek StarWars type Online Universe. The game servers would control most of the attributes of the game. When the game first comes online, there would be a certain number of large ships (something like the Enterprise or a Star Destroyer type ship i.e. StarWars).
A new user would not really have enough currency to buy or build a ship, so the only real choice would be to join up with an existing ship and serve as a crew member. If you are not online when the rest of the crew is, your character would be played by an AI.
There would be many different roles to be played on the ship. Fighter pilots, Captain, bridge crew, medical, engineering, etc...similar to Ultima Online. There would be ships of VASTLY different sizes, from tiny tie-fighter sized ships to Death-Star size. Imagine a force of 3 or 4 Star-Destroyers, 200 tie-fighter size ships, etc.. in battle with another force of similar magnitude. Imagine being able to "modify shield harmonics" or use tractor-beams. Force a ship to lower their shields long enough to use a transporter to beam a security team to another ship to take over. Everything would be powered by a certain element (like Dilithium or something) and your ships would constantly be using up that element. Therefore, your main purpose is to continue finding sources of that element (gas pockets in space, the element could be picked out from the debri of a ship that was recently blown apart, could be stolen from other ships once they are taken over, etc).
There could be space-stations in specific areas of space, etc. There would have to be one overall controlling entity. Not actually in the game environment, but that decides the policies, weapons, etc. To keep it in the theme of "open" space, new technology (weapons, speed of space shuttle etc) should be able to be found and/or created in the game. The creation of new weapons would have to be moderated by the "controlling entity". Essentially, ideas for new technology would be submitted to the "controlling entity" and they would approve or disapprove of the idea and keep it between them and the team/faction/whatever that submitted it. That way, there could be some surprises when a group attacks a seemingly weak opponent and suddenly finds out that opponent has a new weapon that they don't know how to defend against, etc...
A new faction (group/team) would begin by selecting a certain number of basic technologies (i.e. the new faction may have to choose between transporter technology and cloaking technology... as an example, say there are 50 basic technologies available to a new faction and the faction must choose 20 to start with and earn any other technologies on their own, either by building the necessary facilites, or stealing the technology, etc). The new technologies could be obtained by researching as well. A faction could have a certain role called the "resource manager" and that would be that persons main purpose is to manage the resources on the ship, but almost anything can be overridden by the captain ("Move more power from the transporter research to the shields, NOW!")
I realise there has to be some limits on any game, but the idea is the create a space-exploration/domination universe and keep it as open as possible. Then allow people to play roles on ships ranging from 1-man to HUGE. I personally loved playing subspace, but it was really only 1 man per ship (a few could hop onto one and become a gunner). But I would like something with a HUGE range of ship sizes and role-playing elements.

Open Space Game
- Shannon Watts
shwatts@thecreep.com

Yes, if you don't want to develop forever you got to realise that you can't break all limits in one game. Though some companies need to realise that if they don't break any, then they're not making themselves look very interesting!

Idea Reviewer:
-Vegard Aure-

Ultima online, StarTrek, StarWars , Online Universe , Space Game