# Engine Requirements Overview
The Fantasy Game Levels and Experience Character Classes Wrapping Up The Heroic Game Story Lines Player Interaction The Tech Game Basics of characters Tech Rules Space Auto-Generated Planets Combat Flying Final Thoughts | ## The Fantasy Game The fantasy engine moderates a game about the accumulation of personal Power by the player for his or her game character. Personal power is typically measured by combat prowess, but can also be measured by the breadth of skills the player accumulates. Since skills are usually intended to enhance the players prowess in combat, it becomes evident that, ultimately, combat prowess is the measure of the power of the player. Combat prowess involves the ability to hit foes in combat (attack), the ability to damage foes which are hit, the ability to avoid being hit by foes in combat (armor), and the ability to withstand damage done by foes when hit. Maximizing these abilities is done primarily through items of armor, items of weapons, armoring skills, damaging skills, and improvement of vital statistics such as health, strength, dexterity, and other attributes important to both skills and the long-run development of other vital statistics. ### Levels and Experience The fantasy players power will tend to remain static for a period equal to their time at a given numeric Level of achievement. Levels are, therefore, a fair measure of the power of a player. When levels are gained or lost, however, power will tend to rise and fall respectively. This is due primarily to the fact that the reward of gaining in the numeric level of achievement will always take the form of new skills or attributes which contribute to the combat prowess, and therefore the power, of the player. The player who gains in levels will be instantly granted a greater ability to withstand damage done by foes, greater access to skills, a greater ability to use their existing skills, and a greater ability to hit foes in combat. An advanced level also opens up the player to the availability of more powerful items of armor and weaponry. Players will also, from time to time, gain new skills automatically by advancing in level. Lastly, gaining a level will grant the player tokens of credit in the form of Training Points and Practice Sessions, which can be spent to improve vital statistics, or to gain new skills All of these things amount to the ability to improve the players power. Higher levels of achievement are awarded in the fantasy game for the accumulation of a number of Experience Points sufficient to qualify the player for the higher level. Experience points may be gained or, usually through carelessness, lost. If a player loses a sufficient number of experience points, they may also be demoted to a lower level of achievement. Experience points, in turn, are gained in many ways. The most common way is through the Demonstration of the players combat prowess over the computer-animated denizens of the world through combat. A player who defeats a foe in combat will gain experience points proportional to the foes own power and combat prowess. A player who defeats a weak foe will not be awarded any experience points, while defeating an extremely powerful foe will yield the greatest experience point award. Experience points may also be gained by the exercise of the players non-combat powers, which is discussed in the next section. Either way, experience points, typically gained through the exercise of combat prowess through actual combat, are applied towards the gaining of levels. The gain in levels is then accompanied by greater combat prowess, which allows the player to more easily defeat foes in combat, and continue the cycle of gaining personal power. ### Character Classes Variety being the spice of life, numerous ways have been devised to vary the ways, means, and types of ways in which a player can gain in power. Some players may wish to focus primarily on ensuring that they can withstand the attacks of other foes, even at the expense of an improved ability to deal damage. Some players may wish to focus on developing their power through items of armor and weaponry, even at the expense of a better set of skills. Still other players may want to focus entirely on skills as a means of maintaining combat prowess, even if it means their native combat prowess is quite weak. To accommodate these differing philosophies of play, the game engine affords players a choice in several Character Classes Character Classes are divided into several basic types, each of which embodies the different philosophies of accumulating and using power. The basic types include: The Fighter, with strong native combat prowess, and broad access to items of armor and weaponry, but extremely weak in power through skills. The Mage, who is weakest in native combat ability, and has almost no access to items of armor and weaponry, but which has the broadest and most formidable selection of skills for doing damage and avoiding the attacks of foes. The Cleric, who embodies the defensive philosophy, being weak in the ability to deal damage, but strong in the ability to withstand and recover from it. This class also includes evil clerics, who approach the Mage in their modus operandi, but still harbor the general clerical weaknesses of low attack ability and stronger armoring abilities. Evil clerics are most likely to use their skills to approximate the more direct healing mechanisms enjoyed by the Good cleric, which also keeps them under the general Clerical umbrella. The Bard embodies the philosophy of strength in numbers. This class is designed primarily to be attractive to groups of other classes, meaning that the bard gains in power by joining his strength with others. The bard is natively weak in both attack and defensive abilities, but tends to have powerful skills which will tend to enhance groups of other players in their own abilities. The Druid, like the Bard, embodies the philosophy of strength through external assistance. In the case of the Bard, this assistance comes from other players. For the druid, it comes from other computer-automated creatures in the game, whose assistance the Druid can solicit through skills. This makes the druid not unlike the evil cleric in some respects, but without the evil clerics ability to empower him or herself through items of armor. This is made up for in the druid class by an enhanced ability to withstand damage dealt by foes through the druids weak armor. The Thief is both a weak mix of all of the other classes, with moderate access to items of armor and weaponry and moderate native defensive abilities, and moderate access to combat skills. The strength of the Thief, however, comes from unique access to abilities found in no other classes. Thieves have unique access to monetary wealth, with which the favors of other players can be gained. They also have unique access to the areas of the World in which the players live. Unlike the other classes, a thief has mechanisms to go to places and to get into things which no other class has. Thieves also have the unique ability to pass through the world without being detected, which assists in their ability to access the otherwise inaccessible. The Character Classes above do not only embody certain philosophies in the accumulation of power. They also embody certain fantasy arch-types. These arch-types, made popular by books such as Lord of the Rings and games such as Dungeons and Dragons, are the basis for the most popular forms of fantasy role-playing. For this reason, the immersion of the player into the role that they have selected becomes an end in itself, and a secondary goal beyond the primary one of the accumulation of combat prowess. To further this goal, certain other means of gaining experience points by the use of non-combat skills which are designed to enhance role-playing, are devised and put into practice. These alternative means of gaining experience through role-playing can include things such as a Thief stealing, or a Druid planting trees and communing with nature, or a Cleric converting infidels to religion, or a Bard performing for a crowd. ### Wrapping Up As was stated in the overview, the fantasy game is about the accumulation of personal power for the players character, usually in the form of combat prowess. The mechanisms employed, namely Skills, Levels and Experience Points, as well as the restrictions imposed in the form of Character Classes, forms the basis of most fantasy Muds. Alternatives have become to emerge which attempt to remove the intermediary goals represented by levels, the measure of progress represented by experience points, and the restrictions and role-playing benefits of character classes. These alternatives operate in many different ways, but they all still boil down to the fundamental game missions of accumulating personal power, usually combat prowess. ## The Heroics Game The heroics game will essentially be an engine whereby classless/levelless players take on goals assigned by the system on behalf of a faction. The goals in turn form part of a grand story that the player is an active participant vital to its success. The game only ends when the story does, and even then, may end only with a hook into the next heroic tale. ### Story Lines Each player that plays the heroics game will select a superhero with the appropriate superpowers, and will select a secret identify by which they will be known to the public world. ### Player Interaction Players must play an active role in each others attempts to pursue their own story lines. Players should be set only to go unconscious on death. ## The Tech Game The tech/sci-fi engine will facilitate a game whereby the players travel to different planets in space ships in order to accumulate wealth. The wealth can be accumulated through the trading of goods, the accomplishing of goals or quests, or through piracy. The wealth is then used to upgrade the players technology; e.g. better ships, better weapons, better components, which will aid them in more easily acquiring more wealth. The basic idea is that a player creates a character and engages in some local trade, training or whatever so they can buy their First Ship. They then spend all their time either researching better eq for their ship, gathering resources to sell on needy planets for credits, buying low/selling high between planets, or comitting piracy for credits. They can use the credits to upgrade their ships in order to stay in the game. A diligent player should be able to "keep up" with a mud-wide automatic progression of technology. A lax player will be barely able to survive. Thus is born the viscious Tech cycle -- trying to stay afloat amidst the systems constant tech progression. Merchants, both on planets, and in space, are the most important mobs in the game -- players will spend a lot of their time dealing with one or the other. Only exception is for those taking the Boring Way Out (research) which is good only for botters. ### Basics of characters Do not gain levels There is a skill tree, but it will cost you bigtime to pursue it (Skills are purchased -- what few there are) Players are relatively weak 1st level (but they don't know that), 20 hit point poopies. They have NO mana. Movement is mostly unimportant. Personal Shields and Guns may be purchased, and researched, and follow the Tech rules. (see below) Players can qualify for most gathering common skills, and various expertises related to their skills. All are costly to pursue. Some skill cost may be paid in RESEARCH, which would require specialized instrumentation/equipment. (IE, to advance BEAM WEAPONS, you may spend lots of money at school, or buy/build an ADVANCED BEAM WEAPON EXPERIMENT mkIV, and shoot it at a bunch of targets/drones until you get enough research points to advance it.) This can encourage exploration, politics, commerce and combat. The emphasis is on what you have, not what you can do or who you are. (Individual characters should still be important to some extent, so that a n00b joining the game and receiving 1 zillion from his rich friend will still have something left in the game to do. EVE limited this with their skill system, so that you might afford a big ship, but you couldn’t pilot it.) Various attributes and skills will allow cheaper production of goods, which will encourage specializing in a field so you can sell to other characters to make more money. We must be careful to balance out the other attributes with CHA to make sure everyone in the TECH game doesn’t *have* to max out CHA to be successful. Players can purchase ships, and equip them with computers, shields, phasers, software, sensors, cloaking, etc, etc, etc.. which also folllow tech rules. (see below) Character respawning (Cloning) after death would require characters to rebuild any ship they lost (or recapture it, if it was boarded), but loaner ships should be available in the unfortunate event of a player being unable to recoup their losses. Loaner ships should never result in loot upon destruction, to avoid having a player GRIEF others in hopes of financial gain (or to create a second account and continuously ram these cheap craft against a juggernaut). ### Tech Rules Tech Items have opposing Tech Items (Guns oppose Personal Shields, Ship guns oppose Ship shields, sensors oppose cloaking or interference tech, targeting computers vs auto-evation software, tracking computers vs warp field maskers, etc) Items have an internal Tech level. Items that are 10 levels higher than their opposing items always defeat them. Items have a Manufacturer assigned, which includes name, planet, base reliability score (chance to fail in use w/o damage), and base efficiency (% of the median resource consumption, from 50%-150%). There is a game-wide Max Tech Level (MTL) Every Long Time (mud year?) the Max Tech Level automatically goes up by 1. Every Long Time, when the MTL is increased by 1, all older prices go down. This will enable a player who joins 20 years into the game to have some ability to interact with existing Tech, instead of it being way out of price range. Ideally, the price of an item should be linked directly to MTL. Skills can be used to research items from tech level Max-3 to Max Tech Level. Researching to Max should take almost as long as Long Time. Shopkeepers sell only items from tech level Max-10 to Max-3. Shopkeeper prices are based on Manufactuer, item Type, condition, and Tech level relative to MTL. Internal Item levels are never shown .. their name (Dobacorp Phaser Alpha Mark 3) gives it away, and they will have manufacture date to help as well. System auto-generates the proper next Model Name. Personal Equipment and Ship Parts do not interact well if they differ greatly in tech level -- low tech gear is more likely to get damaged when it is connected/interacting with newer stuff. This encourages players to upgrade their stuff together/more slowly, or else take on risk. ### Space Builders can make planets System will generate systems, planets, asteroids to the extent admins allow. Space is usually an internal numeric abstraction. Players usually interact with it from inside their ship. Players can exit their ships into "space" but can't do much. :) (They can look at all the pretty stars!) ### Auto-Generated Planets Consist of less than a dozen rooms -- mostly gatherable-type land, and a "capital city", "chief living mound", or whatever is appropriate. Consist of auto-generated fake inhabitants, with a fake race. Always consist of at least one merchant for buying what the local gatherable-type land can produce. Merchant buys what his planet can't make. Normal CM pricing rules apply -- more the merchant buys of something, the lower his price goes. However, shopkeepers auto-consume their non-stock items to simulate purchases. Planets may have hostiles that inhibit gathering. Hostiles have money too though. Planets may have hostile ships guarding the planet! Great place for auto-generated quests (think STO, but with forethought) For a CONQUEST version of TECH, players could gain control of planets, and have them generate goods (including ships and troops) to invade other worlds. TECH CONQUEST will take advantage of the current CONQUEST engine for domination. In order to invade other areas, it will require active player participation. Auto-Planets should have fake reputations to go with their fake race. War Mongering should decrease your reputation with other races (or apply a behavior to you such that it appears to other races not in your collective that you are unfriendly). ### Combat Ship-ship combat is all that really matters, and that is very slow and deliberate Unshielded players should die on the first or second hit from a hand-held blaster. Fights amongst shielded players last until one or the other realizes they are outmatched in tech and flees. ### Flying The "Star Trek" aspect of the game comes mostly from how you interact with your ship. The example below is meant to show someone who is using a cheap low end freighter type ship with a single computer station and mostly manual control software. Better systems and software would make his life easier. Having a big starship where several players can each take a station would make the interactions MUCH easier. Where you see "..." this is a high level description of either what the server is saying to the player, or what the player understands. Anything else (including the = character) is a command. "=" is a shortcut for a command to enter stuff into the computer. Would players tolerate this level of complexity? I would. It seems very entertaining from this snap shot. I understand there are a lot of maintenance aspects, and ship building, buying/trading, exploring that goes on, but this brief travel/combat example seems to be a very good pace for a space MUD. ... player enters their ship, which is docked ...
    sit computer
.. user sits at the computer ..
    activate computer
.. this allows player to get an automatic "look" message from the computer whenever the display changes ...
    read computer
.. would show what the computer screen has on it -- probably a top level menu based on what the user has installed in their ship/computer...
    = engineering
.. a menu entry, takes the user to enginneering menu, which will also show a summary of status and fuel
    = activate engine
... system shows some stuff as generator starts up.
    = <
.. goes back one menu level to the top level menu.. they could have also just entered "top" .. these navigation commands will be listed on all screens.
    = navigation
.. enters the navigation subsystem
    = altitude 25
.. automatically sets target to current planet, since altitude is only relevant to nearest planet.. .. system tells them about how their ship starts to hover .. .. at 25 miles, they might be getting atmospheric sheer ..
    = course 180.180
    = speed 20
.. player can turn their ship with the sheer and start moving; the sheer decreases ..
    = autopilot orbit
.. this is a fancy software feature... an autopilot type command to increase their altitute to orbit level ..automatically raising altitude to 35m .. better .. they are probably in space now
    = report planets
.. list the planets/systems they have in their navigation map
    = course jupiter
.. is it in the list? yes, then set the course and the new target .. .. distance also automatically SET -- another autonavigation feature so that speed approaches 0 relative to target
    = speed warp 3
.. thrusters disengaged, warp engines engaged .. .. tells me eta 1 day! Damn.. but this is my top speed in this piece of crap.
    = <
    = sensors
.. another top level menu entry .. starts monitoring long range sensors. .. time goes by.. .. sensors screen reports that something detected on long range sensors .. either im approaching it, or it must be approaching me!
    = <
    = navigation
    = speed 0
.. warp engines disengaged .. thrusters at 0kph
    = <
    = tactical
.. our "short range" subsystem
    = shields 10
    = phasers 10
.. phasers and shield (especially) start sucking power, but not more than engines produce at speed 0.. .. phasers give a warm up message, perhaps 3-4 ticks and they are ready to fire .. .. tactical screen means we are automatically monitoring short range sensors .. .. time goes by.. .. ship approaching from 183.23, 90kph
    = target ship 1
.. changes target from jupiter to one of the objects (called ship 1) in the short range tactical sensor list
    = fire phasers
.. blast blast .. .. phasers warming up again, another 3-4 ticks.. .. rumble rumble you're hit..wonder how bad?
    = <
    = navigation
    = autopilot evasive alpha
.. fancy combat navigation! software knows that one.. direction, distance set, and will change automatically ..
    = speed impulse 5
.. that's going to suck more power, but combined with shields and the evasive source pattern will decrease our chance of being hit.
    = <
    = tactical
.. woot, I see my phasers have warmed up again!
    = phasers fire
.. blast .. blast .. phasers warming up now .. rumble rumble you're hit again..
    = <
    = engineering
    = report damage
.. shows what's hurt .. .. shields at 45%, not bad .. ouch, generator at 80% -- can't maintain these usage levels any more .. also, transfer coil at 15%
    = activate battery 2
.. that should give us enough kick to get through this! .. now about that transfer coil!
    stand
    open access panel
    remove transfer coil
    open spare parts box
    get transfer coil
    shipinstall "2.transfer coil" "access panel"
.. using a skill takes a few ticks.. ugh! .. meanwhile feel a rumble, the ships been hit again!
    sit computer
.. as long as im still in the room, im still monitoring the computer, so i would have seen any changes. .. but i can only interact with computer if im sitting at it
    = tactical
    = fire phasers
.. blast blast .. .. sensors make new report -- "ship " is no longer listed! .. rubble detected on short range sensors ..
    = target rubble 1
    = fire tractor
.. rubble hit by tractor beam!
    = stop tractor
.. rubble pulled into cargo bay .. .. tractor disengaged ..
    = <
    = navigation
    = speed 0
    = <
    = tactical
    = shields 1
    = phasers 0
.. now my poor generator and batteries will stop bleeding!
    = <
    = engineering
    = deactivate battery 2
... battery no longer being drawn from.. let it get refilled. main batteries will refill from generator now that we aren't taxing it so much!
    = <
    = navigation
    = course jupiter
    = speed warp 1
.. can't maintain warp 3 at these power levels.. it would just disengage and there would be damage... .. tells me eta 8 days UGH!
    = <
    = sensors
.. watch for a short while
    stand
    south
.. lets go see what kind of rubble we got! maybe there's a good transfer coil in there! ## Final Thoughts CoffeeMud may seem like an enormous conglomorated mess of swirling classes and algorithms exploding forever into a void of chaos. Strangely enough, it was designed that way. There are several design principles that are followed to make the codebase generally Better. These principles include Playability, Flexibility, Isolation, and Integrity. Playability is the easiest to explain. A feature does not remain in the Engine if it is not Fun, or somehow detracts from Fun. This may sound like a vague rule, since people will disagree on what is fun. However, it is quite certain that if even the proponents of a feature agree it does not ultimately make the game more fun, it will not be included on the feature list. Often this means other considerations fall away under this rule, with Realism being the most common. However, in the end, it is never forgotten that CoffeeMud is a game, not a real-life simulation. Flexibility is also easy to understand. Whenever possible, any feature becomes better if, while having a Common-Case Default behavior, it also includes the ability to have that behavior altered through parameters. Sometimes these parameters take the form of "coffeemud.ini" file entries, or of object parameter strings as in behaviors or abilities. Sometimes flexibility is accomplished simply by not having a feature impose itself unless the builders include something in their worlds to activate it. This last method often has to be tempered against Integrity, but that is a delicate balance that is preserved in the end. Isolation is a strictly code-base principle. What is means is that, each class in the code base interacts freely with it's own methods, freely with the core classes, and freely with the interfaces. They interact rarely with other classes in the same package, and they never interact directly with any class outside their package (except, as mentioned, through public interfaces). This principle has served the system very well, as it generally means that the functionality of spells and behaviors, items, or mobs, can all be found within their own java source. This makes maintenace easier, but it also adds to the Flexibility of the codebase by making it possible to add and remove classes with minimal impact to the system. Integrity is a prominant design principle of this codebase. What it means is that, whenever possible, the codebase requires as little work as possible by the world designers to bring codebase features to the players. The codebase contains everything within itself necessary to implement all of its features. The Common Skills are a great example of this. A player can build his own armor because the character class provides armormaking skills, not the builder. The player can get the materials to make the armor because the rooms provide the resources, not the builder. Implementing the feature only requires rooms (which every map will include), and nothing more for the builder to do to make armorsmithing possible for players.