Category talk:NorthStar
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NorthStar Errata
NorthStar will most definitely be a science fiction game which focuses on exploration and trade.
NorthStar is exploring the stars, encountering unknown races, establishing and defending trade routes and trading posts, etc.
Firefly comparison? I suppose, but I am just as happy about that as when people feel SotS reminds them of B5. Great company to be in.
Like X or Freelancer/Privateer?...somewhat...in basic theme I suppose...but to us space trading games have been drifting farther and farther from being about the lone starship captain and more and more about being a thinly disguised space flight sim a'la wingcommander.
I liked privateer a lot...and freelancer as well...but with each progression it seemed like trading was less and less important and all missions were spacecombat battles. Which was fun, but not the half of the Han Solo experience I was looking for.
To us, the essence of the space trader was Han Solo. Yes, the falcon was a hot ship, but it wasn't supposed to be fighting star destroyers all the time or taking on endless jobs to shoot down space pirates...it was about the dealing with lowlife scum, hidden cargo panels, taking odd jobs on the surface of worlds, gunfights as well as dogfights. Shooting up things in space is fun for a bit, but actually watching the cops wander by your hidden cargo panel and wondering whether you should dive for cover and start blasting now? Thats the feel, tension and gameplay we want to bring back to the genre.
NorthStar is about putting the rogue back in your wingcommander
This game is about making being a trader interesting exciting and satisfying...it is NOT about throwing ever bigger and sillier things at you so that you don't notice that you have been doing the exact same thing 3000 times with different nouns inserted into the mission description.
We're not planning to set it in the SotS universe: we already have several other games in mind for the SotS franchise and we'd like to develop another completely unique SF milieu.
SotS is about being alien as much as it is human — NorthStar is more about the things humans are all about and the variety they come in. Think in terms of the difference between B5 and Firefly in terms of focus and the kinds of stories being told.
NorthStar will have co–operative multi–player.
The current plan is to ship it with a level builder and mission generator so fans can make their own missions and story arcs to trade amongst each other. The plan is also for there to be official download–able new side mission arcs from time to time for players to add to their universe. ie: "The Jade Dragon Gambit" might be a story arc of 10–12 missions...have a few new characters, pieces of equipment or ships to add into the universe and set you back 5 or 10 bucks. It would mesh into whatever current game you are playing just as another side mission that you could encounter any number of places.
NorthStar will use the Kerberos inhouse RPG engine, Chimera, which is being developed over multiple projects.
Back Story
You have a cause...The woman who brought you into the world is lost in the big dark...and everyone who can do something about it says it was her fault. Your Mother...A 2 mile long Spirit class tradeship...an 830 person crew...Gone...without a trace. Because she screwed up.
Not bloody likely.
But the only one left to prove otherwise is a self-indulgent, slacking ne'er do well...her son....you.
There will of course be more than one nation/alliance represented. Going to be a little trip along the SciFi road where cultural flavours and biases are NOT erased by the trip to space melting pot. Canada ... Russia and Denmark and several other countries in possession of nice cold territory WILL have a space-faring fleet. More country based less alliance based. Nothing about Canada being "number 1", but just a big player along with Russia, China, the Norse countries, etc...Alaska is nice enough to purchase a few drives though. In the NorthStar universe, the US is easily the most powerful nation on earth. ...Antarctica isn't that great for building launch bases, and it's a political mess – so, why would anyone trying to maximize their trading opportunities touch it? Hence. Antarctica is hands off in NorthStar.
And the aliens...well its interesting how it plays out. Not to give too much away...but first contact is NOT a full on business deal... Once the prelims are out of the way, aliens will trade with whoever has what interests them. In this case, aliens are looking for a little piece of home. And there will be more than one race...though one or two will be very pivotal to the plot line
Human tech has advanced, but it was more work than just buying everything wholesale from the Badgers...
Factions
Factions are as important as you might expect in a game with a universe strong in territorial / political motivations. While there are quite a few subfactions, you can think of the major star powers as having a light and dark faction set up in the sense of being a straight shooter in Russian space means the Russian Gov faction probably rates you as just another joe and in fact the dark factions like the Russian Mob, probably don't care about you. On the other hand if you take on a lot of theft or smuggling gigs for the mob then the underside of the Russian territories will love you but the Russian Gov will have an eye out for you.
What would this mean in terms of gameplay? Again we are trying for logical, credible development. So as you may suspect, if you need to head in to civilization and do some business at a Core Russian world, fake id for you and fake transponders for the Northstar might be a very wise choice. On the other hand if you are on the Russian edge of the scatter and need fuel or repairs, odds are a Mob town would be willing to tug you in for free and NOT slit your throats to steal your ship.
Of course, being on the outs with a Gov faction can be a problem, but perhaps a mob connection knows of a Gov guy who wants to talk to you — maybe its a trap? Or maybe its a chance at a mission to put you on the good side of the Russian Gov faction by making sure weapons make it to brave Russian loyalist "freedom fighters" on a disputed border world currently run by the Chinese Conglomerates. Getting in and out with no one the wiser would clean up your record a bit with the Russian Gov WITH a risk of ruining you with the Conglomerate if someone rats you out. Of course, if you fail then BOTH Govs will be after you like a angry cats on a rat dipped in fish oil.
For perspective, it's not the SotS Universe — the only encountered space faring alien race doesn't even know where it came from co–ordinate wise. All intrigue is based on nationalism. Civilian ships do NOT bristle with guns any more than the Queen Mary II does.
And so far other than a few border world skirmishes, no human faction has been crazed enough to engage in all out interstellar war.
Communications
Space communication is NOT FTL in NorthStar. The system is just not a pell mell group of ships...official data is sent very much like the pony express which means a specialized network of high speed, single crew message darts and very large tender/broadcast ships in every populated system over certain size. So beating your wanted poster to LA, pretty hard. Beating it to planet podunk way off the beaten track, a little easier.
Trade
Starports, depending on quality, WILL have trade info for other worlds but the information will be rated by its age.
Gravlifters at a class Alpha Starport? groovyliscious. Assuming you are going to find one out in the Scatter when you have 25 tons of furs to load? Maybe not so much.
Taking on passengers is a possible source of income. As for how willing they are to interact with the crew, that depends on both their mission and how they came to board the ship...
The game doesn't work at that simplistic level of "planet X buys slaves". Outright old school slavery in any sort of near future human based space game is kind of inane. On the other hand, a contract to deliver guest workers to a project deep in the Scatter with a severe penalty for letting any of them "consider other employment opportunities"... a distinct possibility. As for welching out on a complex deal or delivery, you are free to do so and then suffer any consequences.
While fabricators exist in the game, we are not talking about a Star Trek style replicator as much as a sophisticated relatively solid state elemental processor/synthesizer/3D photocopier. You need an aluminum oxide sealjoint for your towns MHD turbine generator – no problem. You expect the complete turbine to come out the other end of the fabricator – you will have a long wait coming. These are useful as there is no point packing a few hundred thousand shovels from the start when a 10 cubic meter fabricator can churn them out from ore and organic molecules as well as forks, ladders, nails and solpanels. And a dozen other things a colony would order at the last minute.
Prices of goods will be set by adjusting base price with your mercantile skill — the actual give and take process of haggling will be abstracted.
Omni–Crate technologies have cornered the market in meeting your interstellar transport/container needs. They offer a variety of cost–sensitive containment system to suit everyone from the Corporate BargeTrain runner to the independent far trader.
Piracy
If they are given the opportunity, you will be boarded.
In a realm where ships are expensive and NOT ubiquitous...a pirate who establishes a rep for ONLY being interested in the cargo and leaves the ship behind, has a MUCH easier time getting people to surrender without a shot.
Ships operating in heavy "disappearance" zones...assume that crews are being killed and ships taken.
Mercy is not the issue...good business sense is sometimes...a crew who thinks they will live will NOT shoot back...space is dangerous...ship to ship weapons are dangerous...and even a feeble weapon can get lucky and ruin a pirates whole day.
Pirates are pack hunters. If you look at the natural world, pack hunters have a deeply ingrained cost/benefit instinct. Losing half your pack to bring down a full grown moose is much less optimal than waiting a bit longer for a calf to trip and fall. So a pirate with a full on battle cruiser can probably take and kill as much as he wants till the navy shows up...a small operator can't afford to lose half his ship for what may be 5 tons of recycled batteries. So piracy will run the gamut from berserkers to dashing highwaymen.
You can bet the pirate with the battle cruiser becomes a target of priority for every naval ship in that arm.
As for the result of boarding actions, to the victor, the spoils. On the other hand don't expect pirates to be mindless game props. They are aware of how expensive a ship is as well. Should things go badly they are just as likely to figure out that coughing up a few boarders is much better than losing their own ship... and break off.
There may be escorts to hire but to be honest there are not a lot of heavily armed civilian ships laying about.
However the Q-Ship is once again making an appearance.
Ships
The Northstar will be your consistent vessel throughout the game, somewhat realistically as the wealth required to purchase a Spirit class tradeship, or the force required to board and capture a military ship of the line, far exceeds the scope of this game.
The NorthStar
The old ship...well in this case your Mother went from being an indy trader on the Northstar to working her way up the ranks of the Hudson's Bay Trade Corp to the point she was commanding a 2 mile long trade/factory ship touring the frontier when she disappeared...the least you could do is live up to that career arc in her original ship.
You will be modding and upgrading and repairing the ships. Less about tuning and more about improving systems, swapping parts into those systems, crafting other parts, adding modules and pods to increase ship capacity or weaponry, etc etc. Safe to say the Northstar will not look the same at the end of the game as it does at the beginning. Parts in various subsystems WILL degrade and breakdown. You WILL be swapping in a cheap generator bypass to keep the ships shields up in the middle of combat.
Keep the faith...Do the work...jury–rig those parts....and the Northstar will bring you home safe every time.
If you want to upgrade your ship... two words... mortgage payments! The great driver of adventure. Your ship will be at least 2 orders of magnitude more detailed than the ships in SotS...both in decoration and systems customization. There will be armor panels and turret sections and such to add and subtract. It won't ever become a battlecruiser but you certainly will probably refit the ship differently for work along the developed Chains than you would for exploration/trade out in the Big Scatter.
The Northstar and many ships in the NorthStar universe will be fully mapped out and explorable.
No final image of the Northstar has been released, all seen thus far are very prototypical images.
The Northstar will be your consistent vessel throughout the game...somewhat realistically...the wealth required to purchase a Spirit class tradeship or the force required to board and capture a military ship of the line, far exceeds the scope of this game.
The ship is NOT flying through and landing on ANY large body without some sort of gravity assist...and without gravity control of some kind then any real acceleration still is a problem. If you have gravity technology of some kind then a 90 degree to the engine deck arrangement means you save a lot more mass on only 3 floor/ceiling arrangements than you would with dozens in a vertical configuration of smaller decks. Floor/ceiling support is more than just a simple insertion of mass and so one 4X4 ceiling/floor is more efficient than 2 2X2's. Especially in relatively small volumes.
The cargobay is 2 stories. When it comes to cargo handling, what would you like to have to move endless cargo in an out of? A 2 story warehouse or a tall thin office tower?
There is a shuttle attached to the ship, and there will be many a shuttle model to buy...and wreck. As for special uses...well its certainly much cheaper to buy a hardened shuttle that resists corrosive atmospheres than it is to repanel the entire Northstar.
The Northstar does have to ability to have concealed sections installed, as well as the ability to refit the ship according to the specific needs of the mission, though the latter takes time and, if your crew does not have the relevant skills, money.
While you can add rarely found military grade weaponry to the Northstar, the authorities tend to regard such modifications as a prelude to piracy and Naval vessels in particular have strong views on the matter.
Renting facilities to store such upgrades & components when not in use, storing things onboard in your own hold or concealed compartment, or even building your own facilities out in the scatter, will all be possible.
Spirit of the West
The Spirit of the West was a 2 mile long Spirit–class trade/factory ship with an 830 person crew last seen under the command of your main character's mother.
A Spirit–class runs nearly 5 km long with between 600–900 crew and very large portions of it are committed to cargo storage and manufacturing of smaller than car sized objects. Like elephants, they depend mostly on size for protection, though anti–meteor batteries would count as mass drivers from PD on up to medium.
For a terran faction to take out a Spirit–class trader would easily be an act of war.
These kinds of concepts are what led the Review Board to declare the loss of the Spirit of the West to be probable Command error.
RPG
Your character is set...Canadian Male You will have to be satisfied with picking your set of initial skills from a delightfully large array.
There will be full traditional RPG character stats and skill use / development. Skill development will be a combination of roughly 70% learning by doing, 30% by "leveling up".
There will be tons of equipment and the full RPG system of inventory and usage.
As for missions? There will be literally hundreds of them and yes, hauling freedom fighters or terrorists depending on your POV will likely be in the mix. NorthStar will not just use a large amount of missions to infer replayability but will offer variability in the missions themselves. For instance in a very recent high profile space RPG, what you have is basically a very large number of missions, but those missions are the same every time you play the game. The issue is just finding and playing through them all. In NorthStar, say on one play–through a guy offers you cash to deliver a box to his brother on alpha centauri. You take the job, it turns out to the be the family china and the brother is very happy and he pays you. The next time you play through the game the man giving you the mission is really an assassin and the package is really a cleverly disguised bomb. The next time it might be a drug sting and at the other end is a squad of security troops waiting to frame and arrest you.
This game is about making being a trader interesting exciting and satisfying...it is NOT about throwing ever bigger and sillier things at you so that you don't notice that you have been doing the exact same thing 3000 times with different nouns inserted into the mission description.
Crew composition is dynamic. You will start with the crew you see on the teaser poster...The thing to remember is that you are just not running a group of D&D adventurers who are all in it because they hate Orcs. You are running a business. The Northstar MUST run in the black. People are with you for love, action or money but mostly the money. People gotta get paid. Fuel has to be paid for. Repairs are expensive. Traveling with a small army of rambo's, may get a little pricey...
Some crew will have more to say in some story arcs than others. Of course if you kill off everyone except the bitter dregs to recruit then your conversations will probably not be quite as interesting as they might be with the higher profile types.
Crafting. SO you may have a ion transducer Mk5 that keeps engine output humming along...but then you hear a rumor of a guy who knows of some type of ore than can be used to laminate the connections of the Mk5 to nearly the double the output per second. Maybe you pay him for some...or maybe you pay him for the location of the ore...or maybe you just follow him to the source. So on and so forth. Of course that same Mk5 might get blown out during a firefight and your ship just crawls...no other Mk5 in storage? Good thing you didn't sell that Mk3! You did?! Hmmm, better hope your engineer has the skills to jury rig a transducer from that spare overcharger and that ion cannon barrel you have in the hold from your arms shipment.
Your main character is integral to the storyline. Should he die, the game is over.
Combat
While there will be combat, it WON'T be flight simmy....and it won't be the be all and end all of the game.
Looking at NorthStar personal combat as being akin to fallout is not a bad abstraction at this point. In the end there will be some diffs but the general philosophy and structure will probably be pretty similar.
Perspective will be 3'rd person Japanese Tactical RPG/X-Com view.
Tactical RPG in this case means real time casual movement and exploration, turn-based combat. Characters will act on their own individual initiative ratings...be they your guys or the enemy.
Space combat will be real time though. Think of a slightly more 2D forced version of SotS where the pacing and and situations lend themselves more to maneuver and planning than a bazillion cool weapons flying through the air at once like in SotS. In situations where something damages a ship system component, repairs or replacement will also have to be done in real–time. Somewhat akin to Han Solo working on that hyperdrive...
This is not a game about endlessly buying the biggest hugest ship till you are, once again, combat simming your way through the game. Aren't there already enough games like this?
Most useful weapons aboard ship? Sawed off shotguns with buckshot and a good ol' cutlass. You may think that stabbing a guy is about flair, but in a situations were things are tight, you can be jumped from any angle at times and damaging anything by accident could mean slow or fast death...a good combat blade weapon isn't flair...its sanity. And sure, vibro knives or stun sticks are good ideas but still the same concept...keep it tight, keep it personal and keep it to your intended target.
Characters will be able to be rendered inactive without killing them.
If your ship is destroyed while the main character is not on board, then provided you have sufficient funds, you will be able to purchase another. Note that the price of even an old trading ship like the Northstar is such that they are usually only owned by Corporations and Governments.
Targeting will be specific enough to allow for limb shots to disable or stun.
The morale of individuals will be a consideration in their actions.
Exploration
Exploration is an important part of the game. There's big–picture exploration (moving out further and further into the galaxy) and little picture exploration, where you get to scout out, map, and land on the surface — which I guess you could call itty–bitty picture exploration.
The starmap itself will NOT be random. It will be a reproduction of local space and that doesn't really change much. The Sol System will also be pretty much the same from game to game unless they start demoting a few more planets...
Inner Core systems will have some random smaller features but will have their larger attributes common to each game. Lets face it, when you make a trading game you don't put Genoa on the top of Africa or anything.
As you head out down the lines and into the Scatter, then the system details themselves will be completely random. The farther out into the Scatter you go the more alone you will be...of course sometimes you think you are the first to land somewhere only to find out that someone else had some reason to want to be REALLY alone.
So part of it will be working to be able to get outwards into the different arms of the explored/colonized systems controlled by various Earth governments. As you move out you'll find more and more unclaimed planets (or at least, not officially), which you can scan and map. And if you happen to spot something interesting, you can land as best you can and go explore that — could be ruins, ghost towns, features of interest (flora, fauna, or mineral), someone's unregistered landing field, etc.
Finish scouting a planet for a group ... earns you deeper access to their territory. A decent deposit of minerals and a side–job delivering water to a neighboring colony allows you to upgrade your engine range and stock up on space parts. So you go further out there. You deal with more colonies, you find more unexplored planets. Maybe you choose to not report one because you want to use it as a secret storage drop. And so on and so on.
As stated elsewhere, it's not a space fighting game. It's an exploration and trading game where you can get into some fights either in your ship in the black or on your feet on the ground.
Try to picture a cross between Star Control and Mass effect when it comes to planetary exploration. You will close survey a world with your shuttle...seeking points of interest while trying to avoid hazards if any. The map will be divided into sections where you will be able to tell at a glance if you can set down the shuttle or the Northstar. Sometimes this will be nearly on top of the point of interest, sometimes it will require a bit of a slog. Once on the surface you will be greeted with an instanced piece of terrain suitable to the world and biome which will include the point of interest, the landing point of your ship or shuttle and any menaces or unique lifeforms required.
Somewhere between a mini game and full on sub component. It will also depend greatly on how much effort the player is putting into it. Are you just exploring to further whatever missions or plot line you are working on? Or are you trying to set up your own little trade route empire by finding spots for refueling bases or trade facilities?
Think Star Control–y for the survey portions. Flying over terrain will be in the abstract/sensor view, while the graphical effort goes into places where you actually land. Important sites are constant once generated... plots of terrain which you do NOT lay down a marker for are forgotten and landing in the same quadrant later will generate another random terrain set. Thus simulating "I was here awhile back but I can't remember exactly where we landed that time"
Current plans for the map is to include some of the real area within roughly 150LY of Sol, in 3D. According to Google, that's some 21,900 stars within a 150LY radius, so maybe just the spiffier ones...
Exploration Sample
You are surveying a planet off in the deep Scatter. No previous beacons, no Mapping Service registered flightplan in the data base, no other ships in system. As far as you can tell you are pulling a Columbus. Atmo is very close to standard, within parameters to walk around outside with a thick coat on. Nothing terrible popping up from orbit, you decide to use the Northstar itself for the low survey. You quickly fly zone to zone mapping the small details and, since your agenda right now is fuel for the fusion drives, you pick out a landing zone at the mouth of a river with low hills and enough open space to set down easily. You land, cut to RPG view and you wander out of the ship carefully. The spot beside the river is very nice and, after dispatching something resembling the love child of a bear and a rhino, you decide its safe enough to haul out a cracking station. It takes a day or so to generate enough deuterium for your tanks and in that time you decide you will leave the little cracking station, build a secure "Omni–Hut"(tm) over it and a large storage tank. You then pull out a Landing beacon and "Omni–terminal"(tm) out of storage and....
VOILA!! Port AvSquadron is born! The galaxies newest Class F starport and you are its proud owner. The omni–terminal will log the arrival of any ship and auto charge them for any landing and fuel fees. Of course, since you are not hiring any personnel to work way out here, it is a fully automated starport and hence pretty much works on the honor system. (Something actually well founded in the scatter since abusing or destroying what few facilities are out here harms EVERYONE and is very frowned on by other far traders, colonists and even pirates.)
Over the course of the game you would upgrade it perhaps with warehouses, a fully staffed trade base, try and attract other merchants charging them rent, etc etc...
