Follow the leader multiplayer game

[jukibom]

An idea from the discord to gamify ED hooning as a mechanical multiplayer game:

• players join a lobby
• host chooses a map and number of runs
• each run all players take it in turn to be the leader
• leader player must fly fast and dangerously to earn points - flips, speed, flying close to geometry (especially the floor as this is VERY dangerous!) combine to create a score.
• followers must hunt down the player with some mechanic to deal damage or slow them down or cause flight instability or something - this keeps the leader moving fast.
• most points after every player and every run has concluded is the winner

[jukibom]

Some questions arise:

• What happens if followers cannot keep up?
• What happens if followers die?
• How will ship-to-ship interaction work? (physical interaction would add a ton of complexity to multiplayer due to the size of the world and non-deterministic physics)
• What mechanic would make sense for the followers to stop the leader?
• How do followers keep track of where position and orientation of the leader?

[Dthen]

Would it make sense for the leader to be slowed down by the people behind managing to stay within a certain range for a certain amount of time?

Maybe then followers could be eliminated if they fall behind a minimum distance behind.

Other thought: perhaps there should be an altitude cap of some sorts to keep people from flying too safe and high.

[jukibom]

I was thinking something along those lines - that the followers would have some kind of straight-line advantage but I wanna see first if the very fact that they're following is enough of a rubber band, as the leader is going to be wanting to be earning points by flying close to geometry and that's pretty hard at full speed.

I also reckon that ensuring that some proximity to geometry is required to earn points would create a soft altitude cap

[Dthen]

Sounds like something to try in free play when multiplayer is in!

[Codebreakerblue]

This sounds like a blast honestly You could have something like, the more tightly the followers are able to stick to the leader, there's some reduction to the leader's style score? Maybe based on pure distance, or maybe based on matching velocity, matching direction vector, and distance all combined. Or maybe the chasers can earn their own score rather than reducing the leader's score.

[Dthen]

Copy/pasted from Discord: I think I have worked out how to make a follow the leader type game work too. Whoever is the leader to begin with would have a probably about checkpoint width cylindrical, holographic trail, a space holo tunnel. That would be the track for everyone else. If anyone manages to escape through the front of the tunnel, they would become the new leader and the trail would emit from their ship instead. I hope that makes sense lol.

Actually that might be fun as an elimination type game. If you fall out the cylinder or too far behind, you're out.