Objective: Anomalies and Artifacts

[Shawn Qureshi]

While obviously being rare things, the one big facet of Star Control 2 that got me excited was exploring the unknown in search of anomalous stuff.

Perhaps combat was where it all began with Star Control, but I was really personally turned on to the idea of discovering ancient artifacts and anomalies.

The Melnorme are holding out - they know far more, and something has to be interesting enough for them to break the info bank to trade.

Let's start with a handful of hot star systems that caused passing Sentient Milieu ships to fail at some point in time, pick a race from back then, any will do:

http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Sentient_Milieu

We give a hint via a different race, perhaps the Orz let out an eccentric lead on some white star spin ward, of which *Pretty Space* has *Many Colors*

In this white star (maybe Coronae / something?) when our player arrives, there's a planet that scanners pick up an energy signature, lander crew finds something like a helm of what remains of a Taalo ship, of which has decipherable data logs of another white star in a constellation elsewhere the Taalo were performing reconnaissance in, looking for a mysterious ancient race unmentioned before (this won't be a race present in this time, we can call them something like "Jorvali") who were sort of standing up to the Milieu.

Player visits 'a white star' in the given constellation (Hestia has a couple) and discovers a moon of a planet that has an energy signature, this time the signature shows the bunker of a Yuli energy research laboratory, all the deceased laboratory staff were preserved in a sticky resin material that seemed to be ejected from some creature the away team has not yet run across, thankfully.  Some description of the Yuli is provided here (not sure if this has already been done elsewhere).

In the laboratory the away team discovers plans for erecting a platform that could enable a space station to exist in hyperspace, or which was being erected in Ares, and to be deployed when finished in a region of hyperspace between Ares and Pleione.

The away team recovers some RU salvage, and, maybe as a bonus, the player may also receive an energy transformer device, which can be used within a certain proximity to certain very hot stars to generate fuel very slowly.

The next spot to stop is a system in Ares, maybe the red star, of which has a planet with what appears to be a broken starbase encircling the planet.  Upon getting closer, player enters dialogue on their own ship, as scanners examine what remains of a failed hyperspace station project.  The player learns that the Yuli research teams had invested heavily in this project to ensure mobile supply chains can be set up during times of war.

This type of project information is critical as it's exactly what it takes to break the Melnorme's info bank.  The Melnorme will relay that a tiered type of trading structure was required for the level of importance designated for mission critical elements to barter for.  Perhaps during this level of trading, the Melnorme's background suddenly changes Green, to indicate the level of access in the bartering tier (perhaps even this could be expanded upon in the future, like a level Blue for extreme importance, and Pink for highly sought anomaly data)

Perhaps the mission critical importance is due to the fact they lost the potential plans for the hyperstation a long time ago, when they were part of the Mileui, and a sudden war erupted all around them (Insert Jorvali reference here)

Anyway, the broken starbase also indicated a region of space between Ares and Pleione that was "prepared" for their arrival.  If the player bites the bait, they might notice a star appear on the 2nd of every month and vanish on the 6th day.

Should the player dive in, they will be greeted with a solar system with a black sun.  The planets are not particularly interesting mostly, but the Sun itself will present a dialogue to the player upon closing in (maybe 1st planet orbit area), by which the ships scanners detect technology surrounding a star and absorbing / converting energy from it's output.  On the first planet in the system, the player may discover an energy signature, and upon sending a landing team will discover a Taalo barracks, whose logs indicate a terrible battle that ensued between the Jorvali and them, and although the Taalo were successful at repelling them from this prized black ops system, the barracks eventually lost supply chains, and the members eventually died due to starvation.

Inside the barracks is new type of 'lander', one that specifically can stomach the upper atmospheric whirls of gas giants and extract valuable gases - a gas pod.  The gases, I propose, will set a new field of research and modularization to the game, as well as add tons of new background capabilities for the Mileui/etc.

New technologies should be now available by the Melnorme, of which can help with things like gas pod safety, extractions, cargo capacity, gas compression, new weapons modules (perhaps change up standard ships with various offensive/defensive mechanisms?)

Also new lifeforms can be obtained from certain select gas giants, of which are invaluable to the Melnorme, and some of which may even lend data on what happened during the Jorvali conflict with the Mileui (could the Slylandro have had cousins that were able to leave their gas giant and travel in space?)

Perhaps enough could be traded to the Melnorme for information on an old report from a race that used to live on a planet by the blue star in the Morpheus constellation, of which may have had insight into the Jorvali.

Well that's it for tonight, I'm spent.

[Nico]

Very interesting stuff!
Could you go to the story wiki here: http://code.google.com/p/story-creation/wiki/Welcome?tm=6
find the appropriate pages and add your suggestions to the comments there?

I LOVED exploration and space mysteries too, in SC2. Was always my favorite part of the game.

Nico

[Shawn Qureshi]

Absolutely, will do! I have a deep passion for scifi and incredible amount of ideas to help with this project from a creative sense, and even dialogues. if there's anything you think I can help with please let me know.

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[Sid Ed]

Finally we have another person who's more interested in writing than complain. I will say that for the most part the nature of the Orz was collectively thought out by another group and  we have a pretty good plan and there's also a storyline I was trying to compile from the wiki page of everyone's ideas, so try to keep in mind other people's ideas. 

[Sid Ed]

Hmm, where did my reply go? I don't see it. 

On Friday, October 11, 2013 2:16:59 AM UTC-5, Shawn Qureshi wrote:

[Nico]

Hi Shawn,

I am adding you to the story-creation group so that you receive the notifications when people add comments to the wiki.
The wiki is here: https://code.google.com/p/story-creation/

Cheers!