One thing I like about this game is the writing, most notably the descriptive writing from planet and station feeding lore and life to some 2d pictures. You can get a real sense of what is life on Kazeron or Volturn just by looking at a pretty picture and a small paragraphs of well assembled words.
It got me thinking if It was possible to get the same sense of world-building and depth for the player's colonies. Something similar, yet a little more impersonnal, could be included using a system similar to the new faction reputaton , wich changes both from reputation and story progression.
My idea is this: what if the planet description could be expendend in regard to how it is develloped, using different descriptive paragrah linked to specific to population numbers, industries, stability or accessibility ?
One my biggest inspiration for this is the rather brilliant web text based game SEEDSHIP by John Nayliff. In this game - where you play as the last AI controlled colony ship of humanity trying to find a suitable place to save the human race - the endingscreen is a procedurally generated description of the planet your automated sporeship ended up colonizing and the newfound civilisation habiting it, based from what happened during your voyage and the remainng "stats" of your ship. Adapting this system to Starsector colonies could require a good bit of writing in order to cover all possibilities, but would make I think the players colonies a lot more flesh-out lore wise.
To cover; here follows a small exemple of what I have in mind, using my bad english and writing skills:
planet Pella (uncolonized): Pella is a barren world with no atmosphere.
Pella (just colonized) : Pella is a barren world with no atmosphere. Small settlement of human habitats exist on its surface, rapidly growing (hazard pay on) OR barrely managing to survive the harsh planetary condition (hazard pay off). Life is secure and peacefull (high stability) OR crime and poverty are common place (low stability).
Pella ( size 5, with mining; nanoforge and shipyard): Pella is a barren world with no atmosphere. Large settelement of human habitats dots its surface, rapidly growing (hazard pay on) OR barrely managing to survive the harsh planetary condition (hazard pay off). Life is secure and peacefull (high stability) OR crime and poverty are common place (low stability). Its high tech shipyard on par with domain era-level of quality (nanoforge) produces numerous numbers of hulls and supplies, feeding the fleets of the "player faction" and the sector at large (high market share) OR mostly produce supplies and hulls for local security force and scavengers fleet (low market share).
It might be a lot of work (and words) for such a relative minor thing, but I would be interested to see what you people think about it.
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Topic: Smart colonies description, the SEEDSHIP inspired post. (Read 315 times)