Mission colonize - strategy/simulator space mmo, feedback wanted Thread

Hi there,
My name is Jimmy and I'm a Swedish engineer student. On my spare time I do some freelance work as a web developer. I've been playing quite many browser strategy games (Tribalwars, Grepolis etc.) throughout the years and I've thinking quite much about creating my own. As I can't find any game like the one I have in my mind. I want to create a mmo strategy game with great depth and many different ways to play it. I may frighten some of you when I tell you that this is going to be a space game. As there has really been a lot of sci-fi and space game releases lately. Though I am sure that you will not find an existing game with the same mechanics as the one I'll be creating.

The object in this game with the temporary name "Mission Colonize" will be to control a space program with the goal to explore and finally create a human colony on a planet. This might not sound very interesting yet. But here's how it will work:You start out with very limited resources and technology. You have access to a "research" lab on your home planet. First of you will find a planet of your liking. Next of you will face your first problem. Well, how will I get there? You now have to decide what kind of lander/rover you want to send up there. Or if you like to you could probably send some humans there immediately. But what if the landing spot suffer from extremely high radiation and temperatures below -100 degrees Celsius? Well I don't think that will be a great idea.

No, initially you would have to buy/construct a simple lander to be able to do some reconnaissance and research. You will want to check the temperature, radiation, available minerals etc. Next step would perhaps be launch a rover. For being able to investigate a bigger area. After this you might finally be able to send you first humans to the new planet. From here the game will somehow open up and you will begin to develop a functionally space colony on the selected planet.

But what will the game actually look like? And doesn't this game already exist as a singleplayer game (take on mars)? Well, not really. First of all this would be a browser strategy MMO. This means that you will be able to play the game on every computer. You will not be driving around a beautiful 3d world and you will not be able to watch your rover roll down the wall of a crater and get smashed to pieces. That wouldn't be possible for an mmo like this. You will most likely play most parts of the game from a top-down "map-like" view. Where you will be able to see your rover/lander/colony and the surroundings. You will be interacting with a grid-based landscape and will be able to move your rover by clicking where to go.

For the landers and rovers you will have several utilities for investigating the earth for minerals and collecting various types of information. This kind of operations will most likely be timer-based but they will be constructed in a way that makes them really useful and the goal is that all of the available actions should be very meaningful and awarding.
The game speed will be quite slow. You will be able to log in a couple of times each day just to see how your colony is rolling along but you will also have the opportunity to play for longer periods of time.

As I haven't begin working on the actual game yet I do not have much to show. Currently I'm looking for 2D and 3D artists in the game. I hope that I will be able to create most rover and lander graphics from 3d models to add detail and realism.

Please leave your thoughts about the game here. And tell me if you want to contribute to the project in any way.

Edited by: jimutt

"I want to create a mmo strategy game with great depth and many different ways to play it " - sounds great. Gameplay concept too.
But MMO -does not sounds great. For what I need other players?
If you make it single player game and it will be good exploration planets game, I will be Your fan.

Well I understand you doubts for making it an MMO. Especially as I really didn't write much about the planned mmo features. Though my plan is to make it possible for players in the early stage of game to share information with eachother and then when it comes to the colonization phase there will be plenty of "mmo" features. Players will compete against eachother for becoming the strongest economic colony and some kind of warfare system is maybe a possibility. Though I would like to make the game competitive without including the typical military aspects which you will find in many other games.

It would indeed be awesome to have a really good single-player planety exploration game but for that you need a solid development team and a lot of spare time. And I believe that it is better to put your hope into some of the singleplayer space games which are in development right now or are already released.

"Though I would like to make the game competitive without including the typical military aspects which you will find in many other games. " - it's realistic. First scientis and miners then some military.
"It would indeed be awesome to have a really good single-player planety exploration game but for that you need a solid development team and a lot of spare time. " - and for multi not need? Please...
If I may suggest - just make game with options to play against AI or other players. Give a choice to players.

""It would indeed be awesome to have a really good single-player planety exploration game but for that you need a solid development team and a lot of spare time. " - and for multi not need? Please..."
What I mean is that to create a single player game of this type you would most likely need to offer pretty good looking 3d graphics and the kind of "normal" more fast-paced gameplay most people expect from singleplayer games. And of course there is a lot of work creating a browser mmo as well. But personally I am much more comfortable with programming in "web languages" and I also have experience in creating the same type of browser MMOs. And even if I have experimented a bit in Unity I do not consider myself very skilled in that kind of game programming. Which means that I would be able to do a lot more of the work myself and spend a lot less time learning things if I will be creating the game I was thinking of. So my original statement is pretty valid.

Though I am sure that a game like the one you are describing and suggesting would probably draw the interest of many players. But I'm not the man to make it though If I was studying game development instead of electronics and computer technology I would maybe think about diving into developing 3d games in Unity or some other game engine but right now I don't feel that it is an option. But I appreciate your opinions.

I don't know if you've played any of the games noticed (tribalwars for example) but if you have I'm sure you will understand the big difference between the game mechanics in that kind of game compared to Take on Mars for example

But I really like your game idea and if someone else won't create that kind of game I will probably consider it if I get some more time on my hands in the future.