Rabbit Holes & Weapon Generators

   This month, I went down a rabbit hole of ideas based on Magic: the Gathering, which ultimately led me to start work on a weapons & outfits generator!

   In last month's blog post, I wrote about designing "cubes" in Magic: the Gathering, and about how I felt in some ways cubes are analogous to TCs, and how some aspects of cube design can transfer to TC design; I also wrote about ideas for Orion Skies from the paradigm of cube design.

  One set of concepts that I use when designing cubes, I call "MSCTT". That stands for "Mechanics, Synergies, Counters, Tradeoffs, and Tension". These ideas help me design interesting interactions between the cards in a cube so that the cards can be woven by players into interesting deck strategies & matchups.

  The concepts of "MSCTT" are very heavily based on the specific ways in which Magic's strategy is designed. I ended last month's blog post with the idea that I would have to spend some time pondering the differences & potential parallels between Magic and EVx in order to be able to apply the "MSCTT" concepts to TC design. Since then, I have spent many of my commutes thinking about just that!

 

The first "MSCTT" diagram I ever made for a cube – it added a lot of depth to the final creation! 

 

   Long story short, all of this thinking has ultimately led me to start working on a tool to procedurally generate weapons and outfits. There are a few main reasons for this:

1. Volume: When building a Magic deck, one has hundreds (or even thousands) of cards to choose from, selecting dozens of them to go into the deck. I think selecting cards for a deck is analogous to selecting weapons and outfits for a ship. If I try to replicate Magic’s massive selection with weapons and outfits in EVx, a tool to help me produce large numbers of them will be incredibly helpful.
2. Rules: Although Magic has a vast number of cards that do an unfathomable variety of different things, there are strong rules that guide what sorts of things each card is allowed to do based on how much in-game resources it costs and what overall type of card it is. The foundations of these rules are cost, base stats, and special abilities. To make "MSCTT" work in EVx, I will have to come up with an analogous set of rules for what different weapons and outfits are "allowed" to do in Orion Skies, trying to maximize overall variety in a strategically balanced manner. And as long as I'm creating these rules, I may as well write them down in some form of code and use that for a generator!
   
3. Ideation: I often struggle to come up with fresh ideas for things like new weapons or outfits, which leads me to end up falling into the same sorts of patterns over and over, or to create things that are somewhat simplistic in concept. It generally takes some time & reflection for me to refine my ideas to bring in more complexity and nuance. However, procedural generators are great for creating things with that sort of refinement baked in from the beginning. So when I build Orion Skies, it would be great if I could start by running a generator, then review the output and adjust it by hand to what is needed.
   

   In any case, I'd like to introduce the (extremely incomplete!) "EV Tech Generator", currently an early Work-In-Progress version.

   Ultimately, the goal is to make it generate weapons and outfits in any of 3 modes, selectable by the user in the Settings tab:

1. Override-like Weapons & Outfits: This mode is particularly aligned with the design principles of EVO: Expanded. This will hopefully be beneficial for modders in the future creating non-TC plug-ins for Cosmic Fontier: Override. Additionally, it seemed like a good place to start working as I’m quite familiar with this paradigm, which means I can focus on building the generator logic without having to also figure out what it should be generating! As I write, the Tech Generator is able to create Override-like Primary / non-ammo-using weapons, and that seems to be working great! There are a few additions and improvements I want to make to that, and later I’ll make it generate Secondary / Ammo-based weapons, as well as Outfits.
2. Ares-like Weapons: I’ve always thought that Ares had so much in common with the EV series, it made natural sense for players to enjoy both games and for ideas to cross-pollinate between them. Ares is very combat-focused, and has a unique weapons paradigm that facilitates intricate dogfighting-esque gameplay. I felt this was worth exploring in an EV/CF context. Additionally, I am hoping to eventually create an adaptation of the stock Ares scenario for the Cosmic Frontier engine, and an Ares-aligned weapon generator may be helpful for any folks who, some day, may be interested in creating plug-ins for Ares-on-CFO.
3. Magic-inspired Weapons & Outfits: This mode of the generator will attempt to generate weapons and outfits inspired by Magic’s strategic paradigms, trying to achieve maximum potential for complex & creative planning when a player is trying to decide what weapons and outfits to buy for their ship. If this turns out well, I will likely use it to facilitate the design of weapons and outfits for Orion Skies, trying to realize the “cube” design concepts I’ve been pondering during my commutes this month. (And if it doesn’t turn out well, no worries; I’ll just find a different approach for Orion Skies, hah!)

   In any case, that’s the rabbit hole I’ve been down this month. For the next few weeks or more, I plan to focus my development efforts on this Tech Generator, and I’ll probably be posting periodic updates about it on the Discord servers for EV Nova and Cosmic Frontier. I hope this will turn out to be something that is useful to the wider community. :)