Campaign Missions

Campaign missions are pretty much quests. (Why not call them quests, then? Because spaaaaaaaace. There are no quests in space. Please do not point me towards Space Quest.)

What I’d like to do first is talk about the first mission that I implemented to figure out how all the different pieces needed to come together.

Mission: Procurement Contract
It made sense to start with something simple, so simple it is. The mission goal can be summed up easily: “acquire a quantity of commodity X and deliver it to market Y for a reward”. Of course, once you dive into the details, it gets a bit more involved. How do you take on a mission? How do you keep track of it? How do you complete it?

None of these are difficult questions, and lots of games have quests, so they’ve all been answered more times than one could count. Mostly, it “just” boils down to UI work. “Just” in quotes because, oh boy, there’s a lot of it, and there’s lots of new underlying data to make it all work, too.

So, then – taking on missions. A mission board will do nicely:

cm_mission_board

One thing to note here is that the board shows missions from nearby star systems as well. It’s also not the only way to get missions – well, it is *right now*, but there’s nothing preventing missions from being taken on in conversation with an NPC, for example.
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A Starsector Reading List

As you might imagine, I’ve been busy cooking up some new star systems and worlds to visit in Starsector.

Which brings to mind that for some time now I’ve wanted to share a few of the science fiction novels I feel relate to how I approach the world of Starsector creatively. Reviewing my list of novels, I find some common themes: dark settings where terrible things happen (or have happened); they are often about distinct factions with differing philosophies coming into conflict; they’re set in “used” worlds filled with ruins, ancient and often misunderstood technology, scratches and dents and rust and rubble and history. And of course they’re space operas with the battles and pew-pew lasers and that lot. Just like Starsector! Such is what I aspire to, at least. Let’s begin!

starsector_art3

(The art, by the way, is just some stuff I’m working on for Starsector, nothing to do with the books.)

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