Dragon's Eve: Modules Part 1

The module system in Eve is used to customize the capabilities and attributes of a ship. At first glance this would appear to best translate into a gear system, but there are several problems with that. For example, a typical battleship has about 20 slots spread between three different types of slots. Your typical fantasy hero only wears 10 pieces of gear, and that is counting each boot and glove separately. Also, a typical battleship can field 6 to 8 weapons simultaneously, but your typical fantasy hero only wields one or two weapons at most. So I decided to use a rune system for the translation. Like in Eve, runes will come in high, medium, and low power types, and the fitting requirements CPU and power grid will translate into rune affinity and rune power. In review, bodies will have a set number of rune slots that can be fitted with runes as long as the body has enough rune affinity and power to use them. Now for the details about different types of slots.

With the large variety of modules I will only be covering high power slots in this post, and will have another post or two covering medium and low power slots. Since the vast majority of high slots are weapon systems I'll cover the four main weapon types first. In order to translate weapon systems accurately the damage types have to be defined first. However, damage is damage whether it is caused by magic or technology so there isn't much to translate. EM is electrical, thermal is fire, kinetic is physical, and explosive is explosive. First, laser weapons cause mostly EM damage with a little thermal damage, and lightning causes mostly electrical damage with a little fire damage. Lasers use crystals as ammunition, and this doesn't need any translation. Lightning runes will require a crystal to focus their energy, and different crystals will provide varying range and fire damage. Next, projectile weapons and missile launchers cause varied types of damage and have a varied range depending on the ammunition. They don't require any energy to use, and a magic arrow or magic missile rune will do the same. The runes will require enchanted ammunition that provides the power for it's usage, and the rune will just be used to activate it. The only difference between the two is that arrows will just fire in the direction of the target, but missiles will actually follow the target. Finally, hybrid weapons require power to activate, use up ammunition to cause only thermal and kinetic damage, and hybrid arrow runes will do the same.

The other two high slot weapon types are Bomb Launchers and Smartbombs. Mana Bomb runes will take the place of Bomb Launchers, and function similarly to magic missiles. Only instead of following the target, bombs go in a straight line in front of you and explode at a set range. Smartbombs will become Aurora runes causing damage to everyone and everything within a set range of your character. I left out most of the details for these weapons like amount of damage, exact range, and the myriad different types of ammunition, but the only translation to those will be scaling down from spaceship size to human size. There will still be two versions of the main weapons for long and short range, meta/tech levels for the damage multipliers, and the balance between the weapons will remain the same. Now onto other high power slot items including mining lasers, drone upgrades, cloaking devices, interdiction sphere launchers, tractor beams, salvagers, energy vampires/destabilizers, and remote repair systems. The mining lasers and drone upgrades will be covered in general articles for mining and drones respectively. Cloaking devices, energy vampires/destabilizers, and remote repair systems will translate directly with the only change being their names, scale, and they use magic instead of technology. Tractor beams and salvagers will be covered in a salvaging/loot article, and interdiction sphere launchers will be covered in an article on warping. I'm pretty sure that is all the major types of high slot modules, but if anyone can think of others please leave a comment.

Dragon's Eve: The Avatar

Avatar, a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet. In Eve Online the image most identifiable as a player's representative is their ship. So that is what I'm using as the avatar in Eve for the purpose of this translation. The avatar in most fantasy games is the body of the character you play so for the translation a ship becomes a body. There are ten different factions of ships in Eve, and here is where the first decision is made. Should there be elves? Should each faction of ships be a different mythical race, or should they all be human? Personally I think playing as a mythical race is one of the more interesting parts of gaming. So in Dragon's Eve each faction of ship will be translated into a different race.

Ships are further categorized by 13 main classes and 19 secondary classes. These would be translated into different tiers of society such as soldier, scout, miner, trader, etc. I'll go into further details about which faction and ship class will translate into what in another post. The attributes of the ships are more easily translated. Shields and armor will stay the same but magical instead of technological, structure is replaced with health, and the capacitor is replaced with energy/mana. I haven't quite figured out the details for the module system, but once I do it will go in another post. The pod and clone mechanic would translate into a ghost system.

In summation, you will be able to swap bodies like you would swap ships in Eve, and there will be a choice of different racial bodies and societal roles to choose from. If your body is destroyed you will pop out as a ghost instead of a pod, and if your ghost is destroyed you will show up at the spiritual facility you interred your extra ghost at. Don't forget to update your ghost.

What is Dragon's Eve?

Dragon's Eve is what I call my translation of Eve Online from science fiction to fantasy. Like all translations not everything can be translated exactly, and there are a few differences that will not be entirely necessary but in my opinion would make it a better game. There is very little chance this game will ever be made, but it will be a interesting thought exercise and an in depth exploration of the mechanics that drive Eve. It might even convince some people to try Eve that wouldn't otherwise, and maybe help a few people get further along the steep learning curve. The first article I'm going to do will be about how the ships would be translated into avatars.

I'm back...

It's been awhile, but I'm back to blogging and using blogger to do it. I'm mainly playing Eve Online now with some of Aeria free-to-play games on the side, and I'm considering another venture into World of Warcraft to check out the new 3.2 patch. The problem with going back to WoW is where to start. I have several high level characters, but they are on servers where I don't know anyone, and the time I spend in Eve is much better for being in a corporation with people to talk and play with. The way I see it, my best option is starting fresh on a server with an existing large organized group. The group I have in mind is The Spreading Taint on Proudmoore. So whenever patch 3.2 drops you'll probably find me there.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my time in Eve. The corp I'm in has a nice base of operations out in wormhole space, and besides being good fun it is also very profitable. I've crossed the billion isk mark, and my skills have advanced quite a bit too. I've entered the realm of cloaked ships adding a Viator blockade runner, Helios covert ops, and Nemesis stealth bomber to my list of usable ships. My gunnery skills still suck out loud, but my personal and remote armor tanking skills have fleshed out quite a bit. The logistics Dominix I use for wormhole ops puts out a respectable amount of remote armor repairing while maintaining a good buffer tank to make sure I don't pop.

It feels good to be writing again, and I have several ideas to ensure I keep posting regularly. I have several series of articles planned including something I'm going to call Dragon's Eve. Be sure to keep reading to find out more.

Player Participation

I was listening to the latest WoW Insider podcast, and they talked a bit about a new player-rebuildable town that is rumored to be in the Sunwell(2.4) patch for WoW. The idea of content that is dependant on player participation isn't new to WoW, but I hope this town will have some sort of reset so people who don't have a chance to participate in the first rebuild of the town can participate in a subsequent rebuildings. The same could be done with the Scourge Invasion of patch 1.11, and I think players would appreciate the attention to detail and extra content they might have missed due to not playing the game since release. Darkmoon Faire, Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza, Elemental Invasions, Battlegrounds Holiday, and all the holiday events are very popular across a wide spectrum of the player base. Head out to Stranglethorn for the next Fishing Extravaganza and look around at all the different characters you see. Park next to Cro Threadstong in Shattrath and count how many people yell/emote back at him or at the fruit vendor. People play MMO's to interact with other players; and having a variable environment not only adds to the immersion of that interactivity, but gives players a reason to keep playing when their friends aren't online.

Who/What got me into WoW?

Two and a Half Orcs tapped everyone so I'm running with it. Before picking up WoW I had went through an extended period of time without picking up any new games or hardware due to financial constraints. During this time I played alot of Warcraft II, learned about the lore of Azeroth, and came to appreciate the work Blizzard had put into it. As time went on I became more financially stable, and upgraded my hardware(Sony Vaio PCG-K35) and purchased some newer games(Diablo II, NWN2). I never got around to buying/playing Warcraft III because I was a bit burnt out playing Warcraft in general, and wanted to see what else there was to play. Then my local cable company started offering high speed internet for a reasonable price, and I decided to try out playing games online. I had heard of WoW and was interested in seeing more of Azeroth so I gave it a 14 day trial. Needless to say, I bought the game later that week and have been playing it since. I say it was Blizzard's lore that got me into WoW, but I guess the argument could be made that my cable company had a little to do with it. ;)

Predictions

With the recent news about patch 2.5, the activity on the class forums, the improvements Blizzard has made to quest generation, and the appearance of the demo at Blizzcon; I predict a Wrath of the Lich King beta as early as September 2008. I think Starcraft Ghost will be the Next-Gen MMO they are alluding to. I also fervently believe that noone is reading this. Google analytics is the basis for that though. Hello World!