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What would you like to see in a space game?


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Um can a mod move this to dakka discussion sorry.

Um, I voted for a lot of them. Even some of the contradictory ones. I like a wide variety of stuff. (Pretty much everything except anime, steampunk, and d6.)

I like space battles to be more gore and violent. I've been a fan of medieval battles, large armies clashing with a lot of death an destruction.

Some of my favorite non-40k battles, were the battle in Star wars like on hoth and whatnot. blasters, large walkers, and close combat space weapons.

 cox.dan2 wrote:
I like space battles to be more gore and violent. I've been a fan of medieval battles, large armies clashing with a lot of death an destruction.

Some of my favorite non-40k battles, were the battle in Star wars like on hoth and whatnot. blasters, large walkers, and close combat space weapons.

Medieval? in space? could you elaborate?

How about "realistic" ships? Cylindrical or spherical in shape, with rotating habitats. Doesn't need to be anything out of a NASA design paper, but at least comply with some of the demands of space travel (without sacrificing the Rule of Cool). Here's an example, the Second Chance from Peter F. Hamilton's "Pandora's Star".



Most space-based TT games right now all follow either the "Trek" route (big, flat "warships in space") or the "Homeworld/1980s sci-fi" one (bright colors, convoluted and asymmetrical designs). It'd be nice to see some mildly scientifically accurate ships for a change.

What is "girl friendly"? Are we talking "female characters are just as important as male ones, the setting is not a dickfest" (a la Battletech), or some sort of cliché "cute pink ponies and rainbows"?

If you have Steampunk, then Dieselpunk and Cyberpunk might also deserve a mention, perhaps? Thinking about it, the list of possible elements in a setting possibly goes on endlessly, though.

In the end, I think I'm close to Jimsolo's opinion. Even more important than what a setting consists of is that all these parts go well together. Things gotta fit and mesh nicely. A believable, "living world" rather than some sort of magical fairytale where things just fall into place.

 Lynata wrote:
What is "girl friendly"? Are we talking "female characters are just as important as male ones, the setting is not a dickfest" (a la Battletech), or some sort of cliché "cute pink ponies and rainbows"?

If you have Steampunk, then Dieselpunk and Cyberpunk might also deserve a mention, perhaps? Thinking about it, the list of possible elements in a setting possibly goes on endlessly, though.

In the end, I think I'm close to Jimsolo's opinion. Even more important than what a setting consists of is that all these parts go well together. Things gotta fit and mesh nicely. A believable, "living world" rather than some sort of magical fairytale where things just fall into place.

I agree. Girl friendly is whatever you want it to mean. To me that is appealing to female gamers.

Some find big breasted minis offensive. Others want more gore, and my girlfriend wants bunny shaped mechs, bright pink...

I ticked a lot of the boxes, but noticed that all of them are just like 40k's idea of a sci fi wargame. I have'nt really appreciated how perfect the background is in 40k: so vast that the possibilities are endless, thousands of races colliding with eachother. An awesome storyline. Cool weapons, and the odd spot of decapitation and blood.

Got my approval

General Annoyance wrote:
I ticked a lot of the boxes, but noticed that all of them are just like 40k's idea of a sci fi wargame. I have'nt really appreciated how perfect the background is in 40k: so vast that the possibilities are endless, thousands of races colliding with eachother. An awesome storyline. Cool weapons, and the odd spot of decapitation and blood.

Got my approval

Thank you

Hmmmm.....Grimdark is winning on a 40k forum. Color me surprised!

Something designed by Syd Mead.

Id actually really like to see a space miniatures game based upon KJA's Saga of Seven suns with a Ruling Human goverment, Gypsy/Pirate like rebels, Technologically Advanced Aliens A race of robots, and Elemental Alien threats. I loved that series of books.

I quite like steampunk myself. Space pirates and hand cannons. That'll do me.

Personally my favorite setting is Paladium's megaverse. If you can conceive it you can do it, the only limit is what reality you are in. Currently the only big types of settings they lack official source books for are steampunk and diesel punk, but even so you can still create them using existing content with different details that don't affect gameplay. Paladium's system is an RPG but the Song of Blades and Heroes system seems to be the same idea for miniature battle games, the limit is your imagination.

I'm pretty flexible with sci-fi as long as it is internally consistent.

Star Trek is not a favorite setting of mine because it tries to be realistic at times, but has a lot of issues with tech advances disappearing at end of episode, occasional gaps in the social structures, etc. It's not bad, just not a favorite. I like to compare/contrast to Ian banks Culture setting, which is a lot more consistent despite also being extremely grand and a bit insane.

Star Wars is more 'consistent' than ST (in my opinion) while being less realistic. Sure, it has noise in space, ridiculously impractical architecture (has the Empire ever heard of handrails???), magic, and some other weirdness but it's consistently weird and works for me. Star Wars admits its a fairy-tale/pulp story and is not ashamed of it.

So, basically, just decide on a general hardness level and stick with it. Unless that's your goal: I fiddled with a setting idea where soft/hard sci-fi tropes would be dominant at different portions of a universe, perhaps different alternate realities accessed via FTL, and conflicts between them would be a 'thing' so you might see a steampunk aetheric submarine-styled craft that wandered to the wrong system and had to get an ion drive patched in to the boilers to limp home.

You're going to get a hugely varied response with no real strong trends with so many options on a board with so many different likes and dislikes.

A good setting will have some varied elements, with different races/factions that have unique backstories. In that way, you can have an underlying theme and have various races/factions to round out the different settings you'd like to include. In the same vein, its the way that 40k is grimdark, yet each race has different cultures and back drop, all tied together with the underlying grim dark nature of the universe.

I selected a whole lot of options, many of which are somewhat contradictory, like the D6 or D20 system. Both systems can work equally well, and my favourite spaceship game (in my sig) runs on a pure D6 system. I'd be open to a D20 system if it worked well, so I guess that's dependent on how you want the game to work. I don't think many people have any sort of hard and fast preference for which dice are used as long as the mechanics are solid and make sense. I personally wouldn't go about trying to pick which dice I'm going to use before I even think about things like stats, movement, and shooting mechanics. I think those will help dictate which dice to use.

In the end, I like settings with strong identifiable factions that are still subtle and don't force on too many stereotypes or blatantly copy cultures from current/past Earth. Variety is nice, with some humans, some aliens, some purely biological, others pure machinery.

Kinda difficult to peg down what makes a good sci-fi universe, there's so many good ones all with their own strengths and weaknesses.

All of the above.
I mean you're dealing with the entire universe here. Any game I can't play Tank Girl and reincarnated Patton fighting nazi gatormen one week and space amazons vs zombie pirates the next just isn't trying hard enough.

Personally I love Star Fleet Battle, but it is not the kind game I really would like to do.

I would love a Space Combat game were you could pull of Large Fleet Battles were you could recreate battle like Midway or Taffy-Three’s Battle with Admiral Kurita. Lost of Ships and Aircraft, both Fighters and Torpedo Bombers. I would also like to play it in 2-4 hours.

I am with most others and ticked a few boxes! I would like to see alot of the points in your poll in a game.

Although saying that I wouldn't want it to seem inconsistant.

It would be good if it was scaleable, the ability to hold battles that range from long full fleet battles to small fighter squadron skirmishes.

Also...excuse my ignorance but what is campy? as in FAB-U-LOUS campy? or sit in the corner with a gak-bucket and sniper rifle campy?

Something with the ability to design my own ships.

Traveller: The New Era had the wonderful Fire, Fusion, and Steel.
Space: 1889 had rules for all sorts of ships.

Even the old FASA Star Trek: the Role Playing Game had a construction supplement.

The Auld Grump, heck, Airship Pirates has very simple ship construction rules.

 Dmyze wrote:
I am with most others and ticked a few boxes! I would like to see alot of the points in your poll in a game.

Although saying that I wouldn't want it to seem inconsistant.

It would be good if it was scaleable, the ability to hold battles that range from long full fleet battles to small fighter squadron skirmishes.

Also...excuse my ignorance but what is campy? as in FAB-U-LOUS campy? or sit in the corner with a gak-bucket and sniper rifle campy?

Campy is like how goofy the original Star Trek was, something that is humorous for his ridiculousness.

 Anpu42 wrote:
Personally I love Star Fleet Battle, but it is not the kind game I really would like to do.

I would love a Space Combat game were you could pull of Large Fleet Battles were you could recreate battle like Midway or Taffy-Three’s Battle with Admiral Kurita. Lost of Ships and Aircraft, both Fighters and Torpedo Bombers. I would also like to play it in 2-4 hours.

This is definitely one reason I like the rare space games that make the ships reasonably-sized. B5: ACTA had a lot of issues when the 'Armageddon' class ships were released that were generally huge. Ships in most games tend to be markers for points-in-space anyway, so I'd rather have a cool fleet I can fit on a table and store in a small case than a bunch of giant models. B5 had some great designs, and the rules weren't bad but had some definite 'stress points' like the efforts to fix fighter balance.

Grim dark with female captains with big ....oh it's ships :p

I find the term "grimdark" to be lame. I like the idea of big and small ships. Eve online was perfect for me haha. To bad the game consumed you if you wanted to do anything big.

 cgage00 wrote:
I find the term "grimdark" to be lame.

I think it was, at least originally, meant to be sarcastic. It just fit well enough that it became part of gamer jargon.

Probably something that resembles the Mass Effect universe, minus the Asari.

I went with Star Trek style..but really id like to see some "hard" scifi gaming. Something really high tech, with truly alien aliens. No scrap tech stuff (like Orks), no psychic power guys, nothing that is obviously a group/nation/etc from Earth but made scifi (no space Germans, Space Russians, etc). No stereotype factions like religious, warrior, etc.


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Diogenesethedog wrote:

 Lynata wrote:
What is "girl friendly"? Are we talking "female characters are just as important as male ones, the setting is not a dickfest" (a la Battletech), or some sort of cliché "cute pink ponies and rainbows"?

If you have Steampunk, then Dieselpunk and Cyberpunk might also deserve a mention, perhaps? Thinking about it, the list of possible elements in a setting possibly goes on endlessly, though.

In the end, I think I'm close to Jimsolo's opinion. Even more important than what a setting consists of is that all these parts go well together. Things gotta fit and mesh nicely. A believable, "living world" rather than some sort of magical fairytale where things just fall into place.

I agree. Girl friendly is whatever you want it to mean. To me that is appealing to female gamers.

Some find big breasted minis offensive. Others want more gore, and my girlfriend wants bunny shaped mechs, bright pink...

My wife likes deamons & devils and large breasted girls. She really likes the Kingdom Death and Soda Pop female minis.

 Mad4Minis wrote:


My wife likes deamons & devils and large breasted girls. She really likes the Kingdom Death and Soda Pop female minis.

Cheese cake is so prevalent in nerd media any look at the opinion female gamers is going to be skewed by self-selection. That is to say the women involved in this sort of thing are going to range from the ones that can tolerate that kind of stuff to the ones that like it. The portion of the population that might otherwise be interested but are off-put by the sexism is naturally not going be involved. Thus any time you do analysis of female gamer's opinions of cheesecake in games it's going to look like a far smaller impediment to women's involvement in the hobby than it really is. After all all these female gamers don't really care and a great deal even like it, so it isn't really a problem, right? The issue is the sample you're getting probably isn't representative of the potential wider body of women gamers.

Though truth be told it's probably a relatively minor effect compared to the general "Boys Club" attitude it helps to reinforce. It's all a piece of the puzzle.