Game Outlays:


The game plays with the objective of getting the most money to buy upgrades by doing your job, or possibly by getting more skill points by doing your job. A secret game mode is picked at the beginning; a crewmember may be given a secret mission to kill all the other crew members, or some such. Random events may happen like radiation storms, asteroid showers, or similar. The game ends when either everyone dies due to something stupid happening, the station being destroyed, or when the game-specific objectives are completed or failed.

The slow-playing-game:

In this game everyone picks a job at the beginning of a round; this job decides what abilities or tools they will have.

Mechanic: Uses metal to build walls and floors, and objects like dispensers, surgery tables, computers, doors, or turrets.
Electrician: Fixes lights, doors and other objects (which have low chances of breaking or jamming every once in a while) using metal, and manages power in the station, making power.
Medical Doctor: Heals injured players with a medical kit, or treats severe injuries (broken legs that make you hobble or broken arms that make you unable to use items) at surgery tables.
Researcher: Uses different amounts of metal and power to make chemicals; which can be put into processors to gain research points, used to unlock new items to use and objects to build.
Miner: Mines asteroids to get raw metal, which they place in refineries, and allow other classes pick it up and use it.
Guard: Shoots Tazers at dumbasses.
HRH (Human Resource Head): Can grant player requests to change class.
Captain: Can do retarded things like lock down the station.
More classes: Cook, Head of Research, Robot, who cares? More classes = more confusion = cool

People’s appearance is dictated by their class, with possibly having a few different options for every class.

There is no restriction of who can get what items, however, you have to be a researcher to use the computers that make or process chemicals, you have to be a miner to use mining lasers, and so on, so the actual usage of items is limited.

Players start with a keycard based on their class; determining where they have access to. All players have access to common rooms, but only mechanics and miners can leave the station to get asteroids or build, only electricians can access the power generator, and only researchers can access the research wing. The captain can go anywhere he wants.



The oh-fuck-oh-christ-game:

Nobody has any classes. Everybody is allowed to mine, fix, build, heal, make chemicals, or do whatever so long as they have the tools for it. One person might get designated as captain, but this would be a purely aesthetic title, other than also being able to activate emergency station features.

Appearance can be picked from a variety of options.

Anyone can use any item.

There are no keycards.

This game is extremely simple and allows jump-in jump-out gameplay with little/no learning curve, but doesn’t provide much real gameplay.



The Roguelike:

Similar to the oh-fuck-oh-christ-game; in this game everyone has statistics (asides from health, which is in every game) that determine how well they can do various tasks. You start with 8 or so skill points, which can be allocated around various skills.

There are two skill systems possible:

d20: When you attempt to take an action, the game rolls an imaginary twenty-sided die, and adds your skill points. This number is compared to the DC (difficulty check) of the task you are attempting to do. If it is equal or higher, you completed the task.
In other words, if you attempt to create a dangerous chemical, which has a difficulty of 15, the game generates a number between one and twenty, and adds your skills in researching (let’s say, five) and compares. If the number you rolled is 15 or more, you create it. If not, you didn’t create it and wasted resources. If you failed by, say, 5 points or more, rolling only a 10, it might explode in your face. This system is more chaotic.

Point-based: In this system every task simply has a required skill point. Each chemical might require 1, 2, 3, 4, or 10 skill points to make. If you have less, you cannot make them. If you have equal or more, you can.  This system is less chaotic.


Additionally there are many ways a player could acquire skillpoints:

Level-up: When a character gains enough experience points and levels up, they gain skill points to put wherever they want. This rewards doing whatever gets you closer to your goal.
Example: Every time you complete an action, you get a few points of xp. When you get 100xp, you get a new skill point to put anywhere. The required XP then increases.

Training: When a character completes an action successfully enough times, they gain a skill point in it. This rewards focusing in one area forever.
Example (for point-based system): Every time you take a mining action, you gain 1 mining XP. When you gain 50 mining XP, you get an additional point in mining. The required XP then increases.
Example (for the d20 system): Mining has a DC of 15. You have 3 mining skill. You roll a d20 to mine and get a 10, for a total of 13, and fail. You get nothing. Eventually you roll a 14, giving you a total of 17. You are rewarded with some ore and 1 mining xp. When you get 10 mining xp, you will get a new point in mining. The required XP then increases.

Learning (requires d20 skill system): Basically the coolest thing since sliced bread; the learning system is the inverse of training. When you fail an action, you gain experience towards the skill associated with that action. This rewards trying risky and dangerous things to get more skill points.
Example: You are starting to become a chemist. You have no points in chemistry. You can make basic chemicals at a DC of 5, or advanced chemicals at a DC of 15. You need 100 Chemistry xp to get a new chemistry skill point.
In this example if you fail a DC by more than 10 the chemicals will explode and injure you. But, in order to get chemistry xp, you must fail a check. If you make basic chemicals, you will either succeed the check and make basic chemicals (very likely), gaining no xp, or fail the check and gain XP equal to the distance between how much you failed and the DC. (If you roll a 4, you get 1 chemistry xp. If you roll a 1, you get 4 chemistry xp.)
If you were to make advanced chemicals instead, then there is a very small chance you will succeed (rolling 15 or higher), a moderate chance you will fail and get a small, or large sum of xp (anywhere from 14 to 6, giving you 9 possible xp if you’re very lucky and get a 6), or, if you roll 5 or lower, you will gain a massive amount of xp, but blow yourself to pieces in the process.



Persistence versus match-based skills is also something to consider. If the game is persistent it functions like an MMO; your character is saved either locally or to the server and any skill increases will remain with you forever. There should likely be a limit to skill to prevent god-characters and also encryption to prevent hacking stats to maximum.

Match-based: Every new round you start a new character. Information like name, gender, appearance and so on could be saved on the server or locally, but you always start with a small amount of skill points each game which you must spend. In a system like this, players should be allowed to communicate with each other as they pick skills, to make sure that the station’s team has the variety of skills necessary to not die.


In a roguelike anyone can use any item, but a mining laser might need 4 skill points in mining to use, and a gun might require 3 points in weapons. FEATS OR NO FEATS

There may or may not be keycards in the roguelike.




Game modes:
Traitor (Evil Player(s))
Survival (Start with no power, low metal, and frequent disasters. Try to live.)
Meteor Mode (time limit mode where you have to research a force field to protect you from an incoming meteor)
Station vs station (a map with two or more stations, with the objective of researching a doomsday weapon that destroys all other stations.)








Inventory and Items:


Hotbar Inventory system: Player has an inventory  and can carry objects in a large 16x8 or so grid. Items placed in the top row can be activated or held with 1-0 keys.
Clothing like armor, air masks, or so on goes in armor slots in your inventory; or, clothing and armor goes in your hotbar, and you can toggle them on and off?
Weapons go in a weapon slot and can be fired with spacebar; or, weapons go in a hotbar slot and are fired with the hotkey? Might make it too hard to see who is armed or not if no model appears. Could cause problems.

Bind inventory system: Similar to hotbar system but with no hotbar selection in the top row. You must select an object and bind a number key to using it (1-0). Once bound, pressing that key will either equip or unequip or use the item, based on what the item is. Weapons are fired with spacebar. Weapons and armor can also be manually equipped.