The Mandate Interviews

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Written by BuckGB on November 22nd, 2013

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How do you plan on putting the emphasis on the crew during game play? Will there be different crewmate options?

We model the chain of command. You will have enlisted, non-commissioned officers (and on bigger ships commissioned officers) who all report to you, their captain. Your behaviour and conduct will affect and shape your crew. Crew can earn promotions and you may take them from green enlisted to specialists or turn them into captains suitable for command of their own starship (not all crew are suitable for command, however)! When off-duty, crew will go about their own business on the ship. You may walk around and interact with them, and some may have quests to offer you. Other times events may transpire on the ship as a response to what recently occured in the game. E.g. perhaps you took on a fresh batch of crewmen to replace losses and one of these turns out to be a saboteur? Or a particular crewman (who you may have grown fond of) displayed cowardice in battle. How do you react to this? Do you court martial that person or look the other way? In addition we want you to be able to take prisoners and put them in the brig for later interrogation. Or you might receive a mission from a faction to escort a dignitary, who would then be on your ship and could offer additional lore or even quest opportunities. We recommend that your readers take a look here for more information.

MMORPG.com: How will classes be handled? Are different ships and captains considered (classes)?

Ships are built from modular ship sections. Each ship consists of a forward, midships and aft section. We are aiming to have a minimum of three variations of each per class for a total of nine ship sections with 27 variations that also impact gameplay. For example one ship section comes with hangar bays to allow you to equip fighters and bombers. On top of that we plan to have both quality tiers and different manufacturers for ship sections to allow for further customization. Ships can be further customized by installing different weapons and modules like cloaking devices, shields, sensor arrays etc.

As for captains your player character is a bit special. Your player character already starts out as a disgraced space captain who faced a court martial and was thrown in jail. You are released, however, by Anastasia Romanova, the new Empress who needs your help. You start out as a captain and can still advance and specialize in different skills and eventually you can reach flag officer rank which will allow you to commission a flagship and deploy a full battle squadron with escort ships controlled by your NPC captains.

RPS: What kind of mechanics do you use for combat, both between personnel and between ships?

Perihelion: For boarding combat we will employ a cover system, stances, utility tools like hacking devices, personal shields etc. Boarding combat will be isometric, exactly like an RTS. There will be a long list of technology to unlock and use both when defending your ship from enemy boarding parties and when trying to board other ships. Some examples are automated defensive turrets, bulkhead doors and force fields.

For space combat we are targeting a slower, more deliberate pace. You command a capital ship -not a nimble fighter that zaps through space (You can, however, equip your capital ship to launch flights of fighters and bombers to use against your enemy). Your ship will take time to respond to your commands and turn to maneuver and you will feel the mass of the ship.

Specifically for combat we are doing away with the standard hit point bars which when depleted make your ships go boom. Instead we are developing a sophisticated damage model where sub systems can be knocked out and taken offline. Knock out engines or the artificial gravity well and it is fairly obvious what the implications are, both for ship combat and boarding. Also we will feature 3D combat & multiple shield facings. You can experience some of these already in the interactive ship designer and destruction demo that we released earlier.

Your crew is important during space combat as you can assign crew to different stations and thereby boost the effectiveness of certain systems. Later on you will gain access to specialized reactors which allow you to play with power output, power allocation and overloading systems. Jamming, ECM and ECCM are key to being successful in space combat and avoiding detection by using your environment or minimizing your ESM (electromagnetic signature) is a good alternative to brute force and charging straight into the fray.

Space combat will be quite deep and we intend to introduced the various elements gradually to make the experience as accessible and intuitive as possible.

TR: The game will have the option for co-op. Will it be drop-in/drop-out, or will you be able to assist friends in their story? Can you expand on how it will work?

Ole: We will both feature (coop on demand) where you can join up with a friend for a short battle they are having trouble with almost like in Left 4 Dead. Your friend who jumps in would take the place of one of your NPC escort ships and bring along his own ship, crew and captain. Alternatively you can play for a longer period of time and the way this works is that the host player invites the other player(s) to his sandbox (universe) and the action takes place there. The other players gain loot, gain xp and can upgrade and refit their ships at the host player's main base.go in and out of battles, explore the universe together and either hunt down pirates or go off on a quest.

You defined The Mandate as a sandbox RPG. Unfortunately, in most of these RPGs the world does not really seem to have a life of its own; what I mean is that often the world remains static unless a player triggers a change in the storyline. Will this be the case with your game, or do you plan something more interesting?

We need to distinguish between the sandbox world where factions go about their own business and either react to you if you have gotten in contact with them or ignore you. Factions will interact with other factions whether you are an active part or not. As for the actual storyline or campaign this is triggered by player events after certain milestones or key conditions are met. So yes, we are trying to give the sandbox and world a life of its own. Not everything revolves around the player -at least not in The Mandate.

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