Screenshot Starflight

[Balcerzak]

I mentioned in my Interview that Starflight was one of the first video games I can recall playing, and that actually got me the severe itch to start up a new runthrough of it, and maybe if it goes well, explore the sequel.

There's a pretty deep lore to the game, a few large chunks of which are laid out in the manual, but the rest of it is slowly uncovered through exploration. I will lay out what is provided by the manual here first, and then in the posts to come, actually proceed with the LP. I'm not sure how much I'll be open to interaction or such, as far as making decisions on where to go, what to do, but maybe I'll reach out for some opinions here or there. I already did to a small extent for this first update, but we'll see how things progress as time goes on, I guess.

Without further ado:


Letter of Commission

[spoiler=The Letter]Starport Central, Arth Orbit Station

30-10-4619

Dear Starship Commander:

We are sorry you were unable to attend the Operation Starflight briefing last week. Those who attended can vouch for the enthusiasm and excitement that prevailed during the meeting. We at Interstel feel that this is the beginning of a new era, and that you and your colleagues will be instrumental in making this mission a success.

To make sure you will have all the information you need, we have included a copy of the briefing transcript, and your own copy of the Technical Reference Manual. This latter document contains the information you need to operate your starship. without it, you could find yourself in deep space with no way out. Guard it carefully. Needless to say, it is highly confidential and is, if you will excuse the old cliche, For Your Eyes Only. The briefing transcript is included for the background information it contains. It was decided to provide this information in this form rather than as a summary, to give the absent members a sense of the atmosphere that prevailed during the meeting.

As you know, Interstel is in no position to outfit starships as fully as you might like; consequently, a lot hinges on your entrepreneurial ability to generate revenues early on. You will then be able to use those revenues to outfit your starship for more distant (and more profitable) voyages. The following are a few suggestions in that direction:

Your initial allotment of 12,000 mu's is enough to allow you to buy four cargo pods, and to gather and train a crew. Your ship comes equipped with one Class 1 engine and 20 cubic meters of endurium, so you won't need to do anything to your starship except name it. We suggest you train your crew with the funds you have remaining after you purchase the cargo pods. You will then be in a good position to mine the minerals found on the planets in our own solar system. Fill the cargo pods with minerals and bring them back to Starport, where you will find willing buyers. We realize that some of you may find this strictly commercial endeavour somewhat degrading, but we have found that it is necessary in order to complete your primary mission. Of course, you are free to follow whatever strategy you see fit -- just be aware that Interstel cannot afford to give you a second chance should you fail in your first attempt.

No matter what strategy you choose to adopt, it is wise to avoid the following, any one of which can spell disaster:

1. Running out of fuel
2. Running out of energy in your terrain vehicle
3. Running out of money
4. Getting killed in combat
5. Landing on a planet with crushing gravity
6. Engine or communication failures
7. Getting killed on planetside by storms or hostile lifeforms.

In addition, we recommend that you check your Notices in Starport Operations before embarking on a journey. Notices often contain valuable clues, and may help you avoid potential disaster.

On behalf of all the personnel here at Interstel headquarters, we would like to wish you great success in your mission.

May the Rock of Truth shine brightly upon you.

Terrence Willwater
Director, Interstel

Copy of Briefing Transcript

[spoiler=The Transcript](The following is a transcript of a briefing before a group of starship commander trainees. The briefing was chaired by Vice-Director Phexipotex and included a cross-representation of various races.)

Phexipotex: Thank you for coming everyone. Please be seated.

You have all been carefully selected for your special skills and abilities and your aptitudes in the areas of diplomacy and exploration. We are counting on this driving force inherent in all of you to help answer the puzzles and riddles that have long plagued our scientists.

While conducting research in the Southern Hot Zone 15 years ago, on the sixteenth day of ten-month, 4604, a team of Interstel scientists found a deep shaft in the crust of the planet, leading to a vast and ancient underground network. Investigation revealed this to have been built by ... the first colonists of Arth.

People, please! May I have some quiet ... Thank you. I assure you that this conclusion was reached only after many years of careful stud. At this point there is little room for doubt that Arth was, in fact, colonized by a group called Noah 2, and that this group came from a planet called Earth. I'm sure you can all appreciate now why this information has not been released to the public. Obviously, it is vital that up to date proof be offered when we commence public announcements, otherwise the notion that Earth was a real place and that Noah 2 an actual group would be met with skepticism, to say the least. I realize that the acceptance of a new system of beliefs and of new technological concepts is a difficult task. Many of you may still be skeptical -- this is perfectly understandable. I only ask you to bear with me for now. After this briefing you will be seeing some holo-footage which will, I think, cast any doubts from your minds. And, of course, when you begin your explorations you will be using the new technology yourselves.

As you might imagine, this discovery answers a good many questions; but it also raises quite a few. There was an Old Empire and a Great Interstellar War. From what we have been able to piece together it appears that during the final stages of the war, when the Empire was facing imminent defeat, an ambitious colonization project, Project Noah, was launched by an organization then known as the Institute. The reasons for the war, for Noah 2's failure to maintain their level of technology, and for the Empire's final fate have not yet been determined. We have, however, found several references to "Uhlek", "Gazurtoid", and "Phlegmak" and believe these to be names of races which were hostile to the Empire -- possibly responsible for its downfall. Further evidence confirms the theory that the Humans, Elowan, Thrynn, and Velox (referred to then as the Veloxi) were all part of the Old Empire and were represented in the Noah 2 group.

In addition to the historical data, we have uncovered sufficient technical data to let us reconstruct some of the Old Empire technology. The most significant area of this technology has focused on peculiar lumps of crystaline matter which the empire called Endurium. It was on this substance (unlike any we have ever encountered) that their superphotonic (or faster than light) technology was based. Fortunately, there was enough Endurium in the underground colony to allow us to experiment freely and actually construct a few prototype starships. Yes, we have constructed starships, and superphotonic technology does work. The next phase of our experimentation involves exploration. Our scientists and the public are eager for answers.

In front of each of you is a Captain's Technical Reference Manual. Information relevant to your mission can be found in the main body of the text; other information allowing a deeper understanding of those with whom you will deal has been compiled by our researchers and can be found in the Appendices. Should you decide to participate in the exploration of the unknown, you will be given command of a ship and your choice of crew. As an additional incentive you will be paid for any discoveries you make; you may use this money to purchase anything you desire or to train your crew and modify your ship further.

One final note: you are not the first Interstel exploration group. The first group, which consisted of 13 ships and 78 explorers, was dispatched five years ago. To date, only two of these ships have returned and we have had no word as to the status of the others. Because each ship was carrying only enough fuel for a one year journey we must assume that they are ... well, that they will not be returning. Nevertheless, in the past five years we have made significant advances in starship technology and you are a much more capable group than the first. We are confident that you will have no major difficulties in successfully completing your missions

I would now like to open this briefing to questions. Yes, Navigator Eshhh-ahhr.

Eshhh-ahhr: Vice-Director Phexipotex, you mentioned that two ships had returned from earlier explorations. Is there anything that you might be able to tell us of their experiences that would be of interest?

Phexipotex: It so happens that one of the captains of those vessels is here among us, Captain Thysss Thyrrthynnn of the ISS Hyperion. Captain, would you mind standing up and answering this question?

Thysss Thyrrthynnn: Cccertainly. It iss difficult to know wherrre to beginn. Ourrr voyage lasssted forr the betterr parrt of two yearrsss. As it happened we chose initially to trrravel in a downssspin dirrection with a 14 degree corewarrd orientationnn. Ourr firsst encounterr with alien vesselsss was jusst corewarrd of a G-class ssysstem at 150, 64. We were sssurrounded by three sscout shipsss of a very peculiarr dessign. Upon enetering communicationss we were asstonisshed to find that these sshipsss were manned by Elowannn. We were even morre asstounded to find that the Elowannn have nnot outgrownn theirrr foolish animosity forr the Thrynn as have the Elowann herre on Arrrth. Thisss wass evidenced by the fact that ssshortly affter communicationss were essstablished the Elowan ssent uss a messsage to the effect that they could detect my pressence annd that of the otherrr Thrynn aboarrd the hyperrionn, wherreupon they immediately terrminated communicationssss annd opened firre on usss. Fortunately I had equipped the Hyperionn with adequate wweaponrry to handle thisss......annoyanccce. In fact, I consequenntly found it necessary to desstroy quite a numberrr of Elowann shipsss; purely in sself-defense of courssse. Mossst rregrretable.

Phexipotex: Please! Please! May I have order! I am quite certain that Captain Thyrrthynn resorted to the use of force only when absolutely necessary. I am confident that she acted only in good faith and never fired the first shot - is this not so Captain?

Thysss Thyrrthynnn: Of courssse. Though it was necesssary upon ccertain occassionsss to...

Phexipotex: There, you see? Now please, my we have some quiet so that the Captain can continue her narration?

Thysss Thyrrthynnn: Yesss. Well durring the sssecond month of ourrr explorationss we alltered courrssse and trravelled in an outwarrd and downssspin dirrection. It was only a matterrr of weekss before we encounterred ourr ssecond alienn rrrace. Thesse aliensss werre harrdly alienn howeverr, for thisss time we had ecountered the Thrynn. It isss a difficult thing to desscrribe how it feelss to come faccce to faccce with oness remote ancestorrsss. To feel that one hass finally come home affter being lossst for a thoussand yearsss. After ssspending the nexxt yearr and a half among my lossst brrotherss and ssistersss it was all that I could do to forrce mysself to rreturrn herre. In fact, both of the otherr Thrynn on my crrew, ThyssArrla and N'qrrlsss chose to ssstay behinnd.

Phexipotex: Question? Yes, in the back.

G694337: If I may put a question to Captain Thyrrthynnn. What did you do for fuel all this time Captain? I understand you did not take along enough to last the entire two years.

Thysss Thyrrthynnn: If courrssse. We did manage to buy a fairrr bit frrom Ssstarporrt by doing ssome local ssectorrr mining beforre leaving on ourrr expeditionn. During ourr time in Elowannn sspaccce we managed to ssalvage enough ennndurrium from the debris of the shipsss we desstroyed in sself defensse. We alsso sssalvaged a conssiderable amount of plutoniumm which the Thrynn willingly trraded forrr fuel. Finally, with the help of the Thrynn we managed to llocate a few planetsss with abundant ancient ruinsss. These we used as refueling basesss for local explorationsss.

Phexipotex: We have time for one more question. Ok......yes.

Garan Leb: A question for you, Vice-Director. I wonder if you could explain why it is necessary that we earn the money to build our ship and crew. Surely Interstel has the resources to provide us with the best equipment which would optimize our chance for success.

Phexipotenx: I would like to remind you that Interstel is not a government controlled organization, nor are we a military operation. Our resources are, in fact, limited and we have no way of knowing which few of you will possess the necessary qualities to successfully command an Interstellar Starship. It is not in our best interest to waste what other resources we have on the rest of you who will, pardon the expression, wash out right away. This therefore, is our means of determining who among you is most capable, while at the same time providing a little personal incentive ot ensure that we get the most from every one of you.

I wish you all the best of luck in your explorations. Thank you.

Excerpt from the Religious Writings of Arth (one of the appendices from the Captain's Technical Reference Manual)

[spoiler=The Writings]The Book of Endurium

Chapter One: The Years of Darkness(and Chaos). Verses 1-6.

1. In the beginning there was darkness.. or was there light... no, there was darkness. Anyway, then Man came on the scene and verily did he create a great spacefaring empire and unto him... you know I'm almost positive there was darkness in the beginning.

2. Well, so anyhow, man speadeth wide and extended himself amongst the heavenly bodies of the universe, and it was good (really, in fact, it was great!). And thereby and thusly did he findeth the other races. And unto his Empire did he take them, and yea did he accepteth them almost as equals.

3. And for a time there was rejoicing and forsooth all was hunky dorey. Then, upon Mankind was there laid the greatest of catastrophes and he was bummed. The lands trembled and the skies burned and Yea destruction was brought down upon the Empire of Man.

4. And in the fall of this righteous and glorious empire did the other races seize upon the opportunity to express their disapproval of mankind's ways and verily did they slaughter billions of his number. And following this were the Dark Years of Chaos.

5. Woe and Yea and Woe were these years not dark, and were they not also chaotic? Verily were they chaotic and dark. In these years weas tere the darkness of chaos and the chaos of darkness. Both the darkness and the chaos were like unto no darkness or chaos as had been seen before.

6. And from this dark chaos, which was both chaotic and dark, were born the colonial worlds of Noah, which were like unto children of the empire. And among these worlds, which were like unto siblings, was Arth, and it's moons were like unto children of Arth, which were like unto grandchildren of the Empire, and first cousins of the other colonial worlds.

Chapter Two: The Prophecy. Verses 1-4

1. And Yea shall Arth be plunged into dark years of chaos. I say unto thee Yea. Yea! Shall these years be dark and chaotic like unto the other dark years of chaos. Woe, shall they be even more dark and more chaotic. Verily shall they be so dark and so chaotic it can not even be imagined how dark and chaotic they shall be.

2. Long and long shall these years of darkness and chaos be. And then from these dark years shall there arise a new Arth and a New Council and lo, they shall be new. And then, within the bowels of Arth shall there once again be movement. Yea, and proudly shall man once again walk the corridors of the children of Noah.

3. And within these corridoors shall he once again findeth the Rock of the Ancients, which was first found by Man within the ruins of the Ancients wherein they did dwell and live and generally hang out, long and long ago. Praise be to the Ancients who were like unto... well, who were like unto nothing in particular, and who did walketh amongst the stars before even mankind was a twinkle in the cosmic eye of reality.

4. Hail Endurium, oh holiest of rock-like, high-yield energy materials! Oh beauteous shining Rock of Truth! Praise be to that holy legacy of the Ancients for in it shall mankind once again findeth his destiny amongst the stars!

So it is written.

Excerpts from Captain's Log: Noah 2 Expedition (one of the appendices from the Captain's Technical Reference Manual)

[spoiler=The Log]1100 hrs. 3-22-3454

We are exactly 9 hours away from Earth and the crew is completely exhausted. It is has been four hours since we were attacked by the Gazurtoid ships and I am going to Yellow Alert so that some of the crew can get some rest. While the ship has sustained major damage, all systems are operational and there are, miraculously, no casualties.

I am afraid that in my optimism I have made a grave error in judgement and endangered the lives of all aboard. In selecting our course I was fully aware of the fact that the primary jump link would leave us just outward of the Staff Constellation; lately there has been a good deal of Gazurtoid activity in that area. Since the link was only about 8 sectors from the Sol System, however, and since there existed a secondary link which would deposit us in the immediate vicinity of Arth in a matter of hours, I foolishly decided to risk an encounter than spend weeks in hyperspace.

The moment we dropped out of the Flux we were under attack. Our missiles had little or no effect on the Gazurtoid ships. Apparently they have devised some new form of shield against missile attacks. Fortunately, we accidentally hit another Flux just upspin and core-ward of the first one. Our Navigator has just located our position and we are at 189,190. This puts us quite a long way from our destination, but we are alive. With luck and no more surprises we should reach Arth in approximately two days.

Captain out.

Timeline (one of the appendices from the Captain's Technical Reference Manual)

[spoiler=The Timeline]With the information we've discovered in the underground colony ruins our researchers have been able to piece together a timeline which we feel is fairly accurate. We are hoping that from your explorations you may be able to provide us with enough data to fill in all the remaining gaps.

2100 - Man discovers Endurium
2150 - Man discovers Endurium's application to superphotonic technology and begins exploring. Colonization begins. Start of Empire.
2300 - Man meet Velox.
2650 - Major Endurium finds usher in Empire's Golden era
2675 - Empire discovers Spemin.
2770 - Empire discovers Thyrnn and Elowan.
3000 - Start of first wave
3120 - Velox pact of 3120
3260 - First wave (?) ends.
3400 - Start of second wave.
3450 - Project Noah is initiated.
3454 - Launch of Noah 2 expedition.
3480 - Fall of Earth.
3505 - Bomb hit Arth, creates Southern Hot Zone and forces underground colonists above ground.
3520 - Arth society collapses and the Dark Years begin.
4400 - Arth's new era begins with the new council and te industrial revolution.
4500 - Rediscovery of space flight (sublight)
4594 - Discovery of Noah 2 colony and Endurium.
4615 - First group sent out in superphotonic ships.
4620 - Present day.

---

Okay, now that we've provided the lore verbatim, let's distill some of what that information actually means to us to the bare essentials.

From the letter of commission we are informed that:
We have a starship, but it is modestly outfitted, and the crew is minimally trained.
We have an allotment of 12000 MUs to supplement this, but any further funding must be acquired through our own entrepreneurial skills.
The primary suggested method is through mining expeditions, which while not glorious or exciting, pays the bills.
There are lots of ways to lose, in varying degrees of unpleasantness.

The briefing transcript fills in a few more details, (some of which are perhaps a stretch):
Arth is a Noah Colony from the Old Empire, based from Earth.
Uhlek, Gazurtoid, and Phlegmak are the names of alien races presumed hostile.
Endurium is the element responsible for interstellar travel, a valuable mineral/fuel.
There is a G-class system at 150, 64. Elowan vessels confirmed in the vicinity.
Elowan and Thrynn races have a longstanding feud and cannot be expected to communicate peaceably.
Thrynn may have a bit of a dishonest streak.
Thrynn space was discovered Outward and Downspin of the Elowan space.
Endurium can be found in ancient ruins, or scavenged from debris after stellar combat, or traded for with alien races.
Thrynn value plutonium for trade.

The religious excerpts are almost entirely devoid of pragmatically useful information.

From the excerpts of the Noah Expedition's Captain's Log we learn:
Gazurtoid activity in the Staff Constellation is probable.
A continuum flux/jump link/wormhole linking to the vicinity of the Sol system empties just outward of the Staff Constellation.
Missiles are useless against Gazurtoid shields.
Another continuum flux near the Staff Constellation exists coreward and upward of the first.
This second wormhole empties out at 189,190.

The timeline contains almost no new information.

For the purposes of better understanding the stellar coordinate systems, readers are advised to consult the following starmap.
[spoiler=large image]

I will be scribbling what I perceive to be relevant notes on this and updating it accordingly. Based on what we know so far, we can already provide an update:
[spoiler=large image]

The rest of the Captain's Technical Reference Manual consists mostly of actual instructions on how to use various game features and other technical matters, which I will endeavor to elaborate upon as they become relevant.

This is already rather lengthy, so I'll be taking a break before posting the next update featuring some actual gameplay.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Tangerine

[Original Alear]

The part about the Empire, Noah (2?), and the Institute reminds me of the Foundation series. And the rock I guess would be the space odyssey monolith. Also, do you think that this game was an inspiration for star control ii (if you have played that)? Some aspects seem similar. And, in general, the introductory material is amazing :D

[Balcerzak]

Immediately after the opening logos are finished, and the theme "song" has finished playing, we are greeted by an in-universe copy protection notice. While it may seem tongue-in-cheek about "destruction of the offending being" it is, in fact, perfectly serious. If you don't properly satisfy the DRM, in this case a request for a several digit number found by cross-referencing a provided Planet, Artifact, and Alien Race using your handy codewheel, a few space days later, the space police will show up and shoot you down.

I won't actually be using a physical code-wheel, as I can no longer find it, but rather a javascript implementation of it I found awhile back. This is really rather a bit of a digression, though, and perhaps I should have deferred discussion of it until we are prompted for the code, but hey, the warning screen when the game boots up felt like another viable opportunity, so I took it.

We are finally loaded into the game completely. We have control of the little dude-guy and can walk him around using the numpad keys and there are several different doors to enter here. We start off closest to the Operations door, and it seems as good a door as any, so we enter. I think pretty much any keystroke aside from the numpad keys or Esc can be used, but don't quote me on that. Enter and Spacebar both make perfectly viable candidates if memory serves.

Upon entering the door we are greeted with the main Operations screen. Operations is mostly a noticeboard, where you go to find various updates, which can take the form of official postings from Interstel, or various and assorted from other captains. The Evaluation portion of the menu isn't relevant yet, but will become more prominent later in the storyline, after we're told to start logging habitable worlds for colonization. It will include the final report on whether or not the world is deemed appropriate, and dispense either rewards or fines accordingly.

Entering the Notices section, we are greeted with the current stardate on top. Presently it is 01-01-4620, which puts it at two months after the receipt of the letter of commission. Why the delay? Nobody knows. You'll also note that the dating scheme from here on out is day.hours-month-year, I believe the only departure from this was the Noah Captain's log in the Appendix, which was hours month day year, but also from thousands of years ago, so having different standards isn't unrealistic.

Next thing to notice are the actual notices. When you enter it will display your first unread notice, pausing occasionally as the text fills up the screen, prompting you to hit Spacebar to indicate that you're ready to continue reading. When you reach the end of a notice, you can navigate to other notices by the up and down keys, or replay the message with spacebar. At any time you can cancel out with the left or right arrows.

The specific contents of the only notice available are mostly similar to what we already know: we are to seek out strange new worlds, etc. HOWEVER, it is worth noting that:

It is recommended to avoid sector 135,84. Previous expeditions have lost contact there.

There is reportedly a high density of mineral deposits in the innermost planet of our system. Mountainous regions/high elevation have higher concentration of minerals. This is actually true universally, I believe, and the converse, that flat regions/low elevations tend to have higher concentration of lifeforms also holds if I'm not mistaken.

The 2nd planet of the neighboring K-class system contains ruins at coordinate 17N x 162E.

Alien activity is noted is system 175,94.

I've updated the starmap with these notes.

[spoiler=large image]

The next step is to go to the Personnel area and register a crew.

I do so. At this point it's worthwhile to further elaborate some of the information provided here. There are six positions that need to be filled: Captain, Science Officer, Navigator, Engineer, Communications Officer, and Doctor. Five of those jobs rely specifically on the five main skills. As far as I understand it, the Captain gives a passive bonus to other crewmembers in the operation of their duties that is equivalent to some percentage of his score in that stat. I'm not 100% sure this is how it works, or what the specific numbers involved may be. The specific quote from the manual is:

Although there is no single "command" skill, your Captain's combined skill levels in the above five areas contributes to your ship's apparent power. A highly skilled captain can effectively double your ship's perceived power. Also, if any of your crew should be killed, the next most capable crewmember will take over the dead crewmember's functions. Training your captain can therefore provide backup skills.

Each of the races has natural aptitudes for certain types of skills, with corresponding initial values and maximum values. The maximum value possible period is 250, reachable by races with a starting value of 50. A starting value of 30 corresponds to a maximum value of 200, 10 with 150, and 0 with 100. Each race also has a "learning" stat, which indicates how much of an increase in a stat that member will get following a single 300 mu training session. Elowans and Human are easy to train, therefore, while Androids cannot be trained at all. This makes androids a very niche "race" for your crew, useable mostly in the early game or as a stop-gap in case of emergencies.

Aside from that, it's worth simply pointing out that Humans are the best science officers, Velox are the best Navigators and Engineers, both Thrynn and Elowan are excellent at Communications, while Elowann are the best Doctors. As far as communications go, there are also bonuses. If you are making contact with aliens of the same race as one of your crewmembers, your Communications officer gets an effective +25 to their skill score. If the communications officer is the member sharing the race, this value increases to +50. Also worth noting is the aforementioned enmity between Thrynn and Elowann. Either will detect the presence of the other aboard your vessel and refuse to communicate with you in that instance.

I polled a few people on possible preferences, and got back results that were more or less compatible with a nearly optimal crew, luckily enough.

Once the crew members have been hired and filed, it's time to go to Crew Assignment, to explicitly give them their roles. For now I'll be having Ether in charge of Navigation, but as soon as Nightmare is trained, this will swap.

Continuing along clockwise the next area is the Bank. It's not really important, so I don't even enter.

Ship configuration allows us to outfit our vessel. I load up on Cargo Pods because they're the only item that has the same value either buying or selling, so if I overdid things, it's an easily reversible mistake. Each Cargo Pod can hold 50 cubic meters of cargo, and the ship itself holds an additional 50 m³, so with a full rig we can mine till our hearts' content. Also of note is that adding equipment to your ship increases its mass, which correspondingly decreases its ability to accelerate.

The next area on the list is the Trade Depot, where you can buy, sell, and analyze artifacts. You can always purchase Endurium and the five other listed minerals: Titanium, Promethium, Aluminum, Cobalt, and Molybdenum. As previously noted, Endurium is fuel, but these other five are the minerals used in the construction of your spaceship, and necessary in its repair should it be damaged. It's usually a good idea to have some amount on-board for emergencies, so you don't have to emit a distress call and be towed back to Interstel and then do repairs in drydock. Of note, the listed values next to the minerals are the amount currently in our possession, not the amount that is available for sale. The depot is also selling two artifacts: the Flat Device, and the Whining Orb. Analyzing them gives us a little bit of insight as to what their use is, but for the moment they're not really worth our time, in my opinion. Or our budget.

To depart in our spacecraft we can head to the Docking Bay, which is the raised platform in the center.

However it alerts me that I cannot depart without having named my vessel.

I go ahead and do so.

I also do a few rounds of training in Science and Medicine, because I have a few MU laying around, and it might prove useful (it doesn't, but it might have...)

Here you can see the launch sequence and that copy protection check I had mentioned earlier.

And we're off. Note the amazing graphics as we leave stardock.

Here's the stellar navigation menu. You can see the whole star system in the upper right, and your current location in the upper left. Maneuver around with the arrow keys. When you approach a planet, you can press spacebar to initiate an orbit.

We head to the inner planet of our system to do some mining, as has been abundantly recommended to us.

While in orbit, the planet will appear in the upper left and slowly rotate. We take this opportunity to browse through the various skill options available to our crew. The most exciting for the moment are accorded to our Science officer, which let us perform a sensor sweep and corresponding analysis. As their science skill improves the amount of categories where they are "Not Certain" will decrease. Making accurate readings is vital for determining if a planet is safe to land on (e.g. if the gravity exceeds 8 gs, your vessel will be crushed), and whether or not a world makes a reasonable suggestion for a colony world. This planet sucks, by the way. Eww, nobody wants to live on that. A fluorine and chlorine atmosphere with searing temperatures? No thank you. The Engineer menu consists of checking for damage and making repairs, neither of which are relevant outside of space battles, while the Communications panel contains Hail and Distress, which usually also either precede or follow said battles accordingly. When a conversation actually strikes up, this fleshes out and becomes more interesting though. The Doctor's menu is similar to the Engineer's, with examining for injury and applying treatment. This is useful either on the planet if lifeforms assault the Terrain Vehicle and injure members, or after space combat.

It's the Captain's job to select a landing site and initiate the descent sequence.

The game runs a few final checks prior to disembarking and then we are planetside in our Terrain Vehicle.

Edited December 8, 2014 by Balcerzak

[eclipse]

Oh, sweet~! Man, that copy protection thing is pretty funny, and they managed to put it into the story really well (in the form of a launch code).

[Balcerzak]

The part about the Empire, Noah (2?), and the Institute reminds me of the Foundation series. And the rock I guess would be the space odyssey monolith. Also, do you think that this game was an inspiration for star control ii (if you have played that)? Some aspects seem similar. And, in general, the introductory material is amazing :D

There are blatant sci-fi references from several media scattered throughout, the most obvious being Star Trek, but I wouldn't rule out the possibilities you present. I've definitely heard people draw comparisons between this game and Star Control, though I've never played the latter, so cannot comment specifically. And yeah, I'm glad you enjoyed the read so far.

Oh, sweet~! Man, that copy protection thing is pretty funny, and they managed to put it into the story really well (in the form of a launch code).

It's definitely one of the really stand-out features that impressed itself upon me as a kid. Glad to see that it's still gathering appreciation from adults these many years later. Also, welcome aboard, valued crew member!

[Dandragon]

can i please request spoilers?

[Balcerzak]

We ended the last update having just landed on the inner planet of our home system and rolled out in our shiny new Terrain Vehicle. When roving planetside in our TV, we have a fresh set of menus to work with. I don't use all of them this session, but I introduce some of the most important ones. The first, is the Maps menu, which allows us to toggle between 3 levels of zoom. This gives us a chance to quickly spy interesting features in a much broader range than the default screen (which is I believe a 9x15 grid, which should put the maximum zoom-out at 27x45, but don't quote me on that).

The Move command should be self-explanatory, while it's toggled instead of navigating the menus, your arrow keys or numpad keys let you move around on the planet's surface.

Here we've moved onto the shovel and pickaxe symbol that symbolizes a mineral deposit and engaged the Cargo menu. This allows us to either pick up materials on the planet's surface, or to drop materials from the TV. As I may have already mentioned, the TV can hold up to 50 cubic meters of material. This menu informs us of the name of the mineral in question, the amount of mineral in the deposit (in m³) and how much it would sell for at the Trade Depot, all of which is useful information. If you are simultaneously next to several mineral deposits, the Cargo menu will list them all and you can choose to do your operations on one, the other, or any combination. I only plan to include an image for each unique occurrence of a mineral.

At this point it's worth saying a few words about the information in the upper right section of our display here. You're kept informed of the current stardate, which is useful. Actually, let's break for a moment and talk a little bit more about this, because this reminds me of something quite important. Like many old games, this one didn't have things coded by time, but rather relied a bit on the processing speed of the IBM, IIRC. The funny thing is, different segments of the game seem to respond to DOSbox emulation differently. To give some explicit numbers, I find that using 1500 cycles setting works pretty well for stellar travel and starport business, and preserves what should be the expected rate of time advance, which I saw cited somewhere as 1 Arth hour every 10 real seconds. On planetside though, I've seen frequent complaints that the game progresses too fast at DOSBox default speeds, and indeed I noted that certain things did seem to zip by a bit (in particular the "Scanning New Terrain" that occasionally pops up while roving the surface. What "Scanning New Terrain" really means, as far as I can tell, is that you've located something new and exciting somewhere within the field of your tri-map sensors, so that's often a good time to switch out of move, and take a pit stop and look at the broader picture. But back to the clock cycles. For now I'm using 500 cycles while on planet-side, and it seems to be doing reasonable, if perhaps slightly too sluggish, with the occasionally experienced input lag where I've got another movement in the queue (because I am impatient) and I'll slide past the mineral and then have to take one step back. We'll see if this setting continues to work when I land on a planet with aggressive native life. I may need to experiment with numbers when I finally get into a space battle too, because some of that is extremely time dependent and can easily be a matter of life or death.

Okay, let's use this image to continue discussing some of the other information displayed in the upper-right before I got sidetracked. You're told the remaining energy in your TV, which is a rough indicator of how far it can travel before it dies. If you stall out and run out of energy, there are a few squares still you can travel on emergency back-up power, I believe, but if you still can't manage to return to the ship, your TV is lost, and I think your crew has to hoof it back to the ship on foot, but you've lost any cargo you've acquired, and will have to return to HQ to get a new TV, which carries a hefty fine. I think 10000 MUs? For that reason it's always a good idea to start heading back when the meter starts to approach 50%, as that's a decent general idea of how far you can travel.

However, it's not an exact measure, as we note when we discuss the next item in the list. Efficiency % tells us how well our TV is able to use its energy in the current terrain. In nice, flat, lowlands, you'll get high efficiency values. In rugged mountainous regions, or treacherous icy terrain, expect to see that value sink like a rock. This has been known to burn me in my "ballparking-it" calculations on successfully returning to the ship in the past, as on my way out I was in high efficiency terrain, but on the way back I apparently stumbled into rougher terrain. Cargo % is self-explanatory, a quick gauge of how full your TV is of stuff, and the final information provided is how many kilometers you are from your ship, and which direction the ship is from your current location. Each movement square on the grid is 1 km, and distance is calculated using the Pythagorean theorem for diagonals, I believe. Once you return to the ship, you transfer all cargo to the pods, and refuel, leaving you set to either go on another run, or to launch and find a new landing site.

[spoiler=various minerals]

I take 3 trips out from this location, heading roughly east one trip (96% full), roughly south on the second (100% full), and roughly west on the third (67% full). Following that I leave our first landing site of 14N x 150W and land at a new location of 78S x 133E. There is no real significance to these choices, I just eyeballed the map and tried to land in areas of high-ish elevation that wasn't the absolute highest, to try to strike a balance between mineral density and travel efficiency.

This is our new landing zone.

I also remember to make use of the Look command, to scope out the details of a mineral deposit without having to drive right up next to it. It can be useful if you're getting either borderline on energy and don't want to necessarily waste it for low value product, or if you're already nearly full of cargo, and similarly want to avoid low value product. The Scan command behaved identically on minerals, but I think has a distinct result if used on lifeforms, I cannot recall.

[spoiler=various new minerals]

If you want to prioritize one mineral over another and your cargo is full, you have to drop all of one mineral, pick up the other, then pick up whatever you can still carry of the first, as seen here in the juggle I do for Titanium. (I tried to take the initial 8.5 but there wasn't enough room. I could have saved time/keystrokes if I just dropped the Chromium to begin with.) All told, I took another 3 trips out from this location. The first went northwest and came back with 100% full, the second went southeast and came back 100% full, the third went northeast and came back 100% full.

At this point however, the crew are restless and bored with mining after 10 days or so, and I agree. We launch and return to Stardock. We turned out to have overstocked on Cargo Pods, because we're only at 35% capacity. Oh well.

First order of business is to head to check up on new Notices.

Quite a few piled up while we were gone, the first arriving the day after we left, and containing dire news, laying out the primary plot arc of the game. This system's sun's stability is failing, and an unavoidably deadly flare is predicted to be sometime in the near future. The cause of this instability is unknown, so in absence of any way to counteract it, shipping citizens out on colony ships is the only alternative. Our mission priorities are shifting to:

Acquire as much Endurium as possible to help fuel the colony ships.

Log potential colony worlds.

Investigate causes of the sun's instability? The line about outfitting our ship with a sensor, and the possibility of other systems experiencing similar flares is telling, and perhaps we would do well to ask other races we encounter if they know anything? It couldn't hurt, right?

The criteria for a world to be considered as a colony are as follows:

The temperature must be either Temperate or Tropical

The gravity is required to be less than 2.0 g's. Optimally it will fall in the range of 0.7 to 1.3 g's.

Oxygen must be present in the atmosphere.

There must be water present on the surface.

The severity of atmospheric activity must be either None, Calm, or Moderate.

Finally, while not required, worlds with high bio-density and mineral density are to be prioritized if possible.

The notice on 03-01 is a simple warning about dangerous androids 20 sectors coreward of Arth.

On 05-01 information was logged regarding a cross-shaped constellation outward and downspin from us that appears to be a hotbed of wormholes. Caution is advised.

08-01 is our first example of the occasionally pointless postings.

10-01, today!, is a listing in which it is reported that ancient ruins were discovered on the 3rd planet in our system, and further exploration there is warranted. What a convenient time to have returned, this seems like a ripe destination for our next outing. (After that is probably the ruins in the neighboring K-class system from the 01-01 posting, after that... who knows!?)

[spoiler=an updated starmap with the new scribbles I add]

Next we visit the Trade Depot and sell our minerals. I keep a reserve of 5 cubic meters of each of the minerals used for repair (or as many m³ as I was able to collect). I honestly don't know if that's anywhere near enough quantity, but I am still kind of strapped for cash, so liquidating what I can when I can is preferred. Our mining run earned us nearly 72000 MUs, sweet!

Most of that money goes straight into training our crew. It may be too early for this, and perhaps I should be allocating more $ towards ship upgrades, but I guess time will tell. I, for one want, my crew to be the best that they can be. I also talked with Ether, and he was okay with replacing the Android him with a Velox him, so I proceed to do so, because otherwise you can clearly see how badly it would have been outclassed. Aside from training every member with a specialized task to as close to 250 without going over, I also put 10 training sessions in every category in for our Captain, to try to let the Jack of All Trades benefits kick in a little.

I suppose I could have left Ether as Navigation and had Nightmare be the Engineer, but I got committed to the swap before I pulled a Kafka on Ether and had him wake up one morning as a bug.

Next I head to the Ship Configuration and ogle some upgrades I'm interested in, but can't quite afford yet (the MUs available is slightly off, as Ether's training hasn't been deducted in those screenshots.)

The Bank will list the most recent revenues and expenditures, and can be a handy place to keep track of things. I don't foresee earning interest to be a major issue, as those 3 MUs are unlikely to have a significant effect. I guess if we'd left 10000 and only have picked up 4 Cargo Pods and not done any training it would have rocketed all the way up to 30 MUs... and still been negligible.

Here's the screen that comes up when you hit Esc (primarily when you want to save and quit). Make sure to never select the option to End Game Unsaved. It will destroy everything, and you'll have to either reinstall, or copy over the ruined save files with backup saves you made. The save system for this game is really rather wonky, as they have it set up to essentially rewrite the executable or the main data files, or something, I don't fully grok the details. But yeah, STARA.COM and STARB.COM are the fellas in question you're going to want to make backups of. If it weren't for manual savescumming, this game would be a single slot hardcore run, and that could get frustrating. This was the era of floppy disks though, and might have even been pre-hard-drives being a thing, so I think it was a certain level of expected that you would know how to do this.

[eclipse]

lol Kafka.

Being well-equipped is always a good thing, so if my character whines about it, smack her. She should know better.

[Balcerzak]

We swing into orbit around the 3rd planet in the system, eclipse initiates a sensor scan and gives her resulting analysis. Then Balcerzak chooses a landing zone at pretty much random, which happens to be 28N x 163W

Almost right out of the gate we come face to face with alien life. We Scan it and Stun it (almost assuredly overkill, as I later learn that most of the lifeforms you can just roll up next to and collect, but I wasn't taking any chances on our first sample). I don't have a full list of the various possibilities as far as Aggression and Intelligence, but maybe I could work on compiling one? So far if I had to guess based on things I've just seen recently I'd peg things at:

aggression: daisy < wolf < rhino =< piranha

intelligence: slug < cat =< fox < monkey.

Cargo menu provides several options for lifeforms: Capture, Record, Describe. As far as I can tell, Describe tells you identical to the Look command (which is indeed different than the Scan command). Record captures its biodata on hologram, and capture captures it and puts it into stasis. You can and should sell both holodata and specimens, live captures are understandably worth more. The big downfall to lifeforms in this game as a potential source of money is that Interstel will only pay for unique samples, unlike with minerals where you can collect as much Chromium as you can carry.

At this point, I decide it's worthwhile to bring up the final menu item in the TV row, Icons. This provides a handy list correlating the various sprites to what they represent. Most of them are related to various types of lifeforms, classified by size for the "producers" (read plants), and by body type symmetry (bilateral, radial, none) and number of legs for the non-producers. Also of note are the icons for ancient and recent ruins. Ruins will frequently house artifact, and ancient ruins almost always have Endurium diagonally adjacent to them. The reminder of topographical elevation can also be handy, as sometimes the colors change from planet to planet.

Worth mentioning as well here is weather, which will occasionally crop up. If your Navigator's skill is less than 200, your Terrain Vehicle can become lost in storms. I don't remember what all this entails, but it probably includes no longer telling you which direction your ship is in or how distant in the upper right, nor even what your current coordinates are in the upper left. Don't quote me on this, because I beefed Nightmare's skills so I wouldn't have to find out.

Capture attempts can be unsuccessful. Try stunning the creature in that case, or firing a laser at it. If you hit it too many times with lasers, you might kill it, and I believe dead lifeforms are worthless. The laser appears red, which you can contrast with the stunner which I showed you earlier, which was blue.

Another example of weather. Electrical storms can be actually quite dangerous. Nightmare and eclipse were both injured in the storm.

I'm including here some of the zoomed out map settings, so you can see how the lifeform sprites scale with distance. In the furthest out setting, lifeforms become just black squares and indistinguishable what type of lifeform it actually is. This is a good way to make sure you're not mistaking an amorphous for an ancient ruin or something though, and I tend to appreciate it as a feature.

As I mentioned before, Interstel requires unique samples. If you try to record data of a lifeform you already have, you receive the following message. It's still worth trying on a lifeform with the same sprite (unless you take the time to Look/Scan and can remember the details) because there will often be several lifeforms that share a sprite, because they might both be bilaterally symmetric with more than two legs (e.g. a cow is not a cat is not an iguana).

[spoiler=a few other examples of interesting lifeforms]

Just like the other planet, there are minerals around, they're just less abundant.

More weather. Also, you'll notice our crew has been healing over time. Thank Kitty for that. I'm pretty sure without a well-trained doctor, natural healing is much slower. Obviously they'd heal better if we were back on the ship with access to the Examine/Treat menu and a full set of equipment and supplies, but you take what you can get.

I accidentally parked by TV on top of the ruin, so you can't really see its sprite, but we find a Throbbing Mass in a recent ruin.

Science Officer eclipse does not take kindly to the captain's joking remarks about how she should analyze his throbbing mass. Looks like that will have to wait until we return to starport.

The ruins' sprites in the maximum zoom, for convenient reference.

Here you can see the Endurium diagonally adjacent to an ancient ruin like I mentioned previously.

In rare cases you can also find messages in ruins (generally in recent ones, IIRC). These are timestamped with the date you find the message, and should be read and recorded. They will often provide crucial clues or plot details. Like this one does, about the Black Egg Device, located at 52N x 16E on the third planet of system 238,189 in some Phlegnak ruins. That's hella far away from our current position, but I'm sure I'll make my way there eventually.

Much like I didn't bother to cap every mineral found, and force you to watch all of them, I won't do the same for lifeforms or artifacts. Just have a small sampling of some of the more interesting ones.

We make three expeditions here in our TV, returning with 64%, 100%, and 71% cargo filled before we lift off and try settling down and exploring ruins on a different part of the planet. 22S x 66E is our new destination, but immediately upon setting TV outside, our Elowan doctor takes damage. Compare her hurt to the hurt sustained during the electrical storm by our other members and you can really see the effects of that 2 rating in durability proving that our leafy companion really can't stand up to stiff breeze at all.

I finally find some Plutonium, which was supposedly common on this planet. Aside from that, here is a sampling of some other interesting collections.

I do three treks out from this position, returning with 60%, 90%, and 24% cargo. Then I decide I've had enough, lift off, and head back to starport to see what's new.

[Original Alear]

Aside from training every member with a specialized task to as close to 250 without going over, I also put 10 training sessions in every category in for our Captain, to try to let the Jack of All Trades benefits kick in a little.

So, are you not going over 250 because there's some sort of "reset" back to 0 if you do that, or something?

Edited December 8, 2014 by Severlan

[Balcerzak]

So, are you not going over 250 because there's some sort of "reset" back to 0 if you do that, or something?

No, I'm just a miser saving ~1000 MUs from not taking those three 300 MU training sessions. That would have been a brutal bug if it existed, but that is not the case. I'm relying on things like 246 being "good enough", especially with the probably Captain boosts. After I get class 4 engines and maybe some class 2 shields and missiles, I'll probably go ahead and top the crew off, but it's simply not a priority at present. The big early benchmarks are 150 Navigation (to spot continuum fluxes), 200 Navigation (to be safe in planet storms, enough Science to never get Not Certain (which I'm honestly not sure what that level is, you probably get something like 1 reading for every 30 skill or something? I dunno, I'd have to do testing, I don't remember it being laid out in the manual). A Science level of 150 will also let you pick up signals from alien vessels from a distance, so that's probably the minimum, and I overkilled. Honestly, I probably could have saved money and not trained in either Comms or Engineering until I planned on venturing into space likely to meet alien vessels, and I probably didn't need the full 250 medicine for your basic planet storms and specimen attacks but...

This is basically a relearning experience for me. I also probably shouldn't have spent so much on my Captain, but ego for namesake character, and misjudging how profitable my expedition to the 3rd planet was going to be.

Edited December 8, 2014 by Balcerzak

[Balcerzak]

Back at starport the first thing I always do is check for new Notices in operations. A few things of note are that the scientists confirm that the instability in our star is external to the system. Something, or someone, is pushing our sun toward the flare that will inevitably destroy all life on Arth. This confirms my hunches that asking around when I start encounter alien ships is a good plan. Aside from a list of wormhole endpoints (128,105 to 146,112; 126,87 to 173,88; 148,166 to 170,93; and 104,82 to 118,107), the other notices are just chatter.

I add the wormholes and the Black Egg Device location to my current starmap.

[spoiler=starmap]

The trade depot is the next stop on my list. Analyzing artifacts costs a flat 500 MU per artifact. All of the artifacts we've recovered lack for any strategic value, and are simply alien curios to be sold or traded. I decline to actually sell any of them, because they don't take up much cargo space, and aren't going to make a dent on the purchases I would like to be making anyway. I then sell off excess minerals, saving the Plutonium to trade to the Thrynn, and retaining a few extra cubic meters of the repair minerals.

Aside from the 36.3 m³ of Endurium we picked up, and the message we discovered at the ruins, our trip to the third planet of our system was a pretty miserable failure, financially, as we only got ~9000 MU, and it took us 16 days. Compared to our ~70000 MU in 10 to the inner planet, that's just pathetic. On the other hand, dealing with lifeforms and ruins was certainly a lot more exciting than just pure mining, so the crew isn't complaining too much.

After my business here is concluded, we return to the ship and take sensor readings of the other two planets in our system, but decide not to land on either of them. I'm actually compiling a sort of spreadsheet recording the most important details of the various planets scanned, and I'll append it in simplified chart from near the bottom of this update. That's not going to stop me from dropping a few screens to give a sense of the planet here in the meantime, but it doesn't have all the info.

Leaving the system and entering hyperspace flight is as simple as driving your spaceship off the edge of the map in any direction.

You can pull up an in-game version of the starmap, and move around a cursor to get a feel for the distance and the amount of fuel needed to make the trip.

Our goal here is simple, hit up the adjacent K-class star system, and investigate the 2nd planet like the notice at the beginning of the game suggested. Before we do that though, I take some time to scan all of the other planets in the system for good measure.

Now's as good a time as any to drop my listing of planets and their important data. The 2nd planet was looking like a suitable colony world, but the gravity is just a little high of the acceptable range. Unfortunate. The temperature might also have been an issue, I'm not sure if when given a range the whole range needs to be agreeable, or only part of the range. I guess we'll find out later on if I recommend a world that gets disqualified for that reason.

System:Planet  	Bio%	Min %	Min type1	Min type2	Min type3	Ruins?	Gravity	Weather  	Temperature     	Oxygen?	Water?
125,100:1	0	23	Chromium	Promethium	Tungsten	N	0.04	None    	Searing to Inferno	N	Y
125,100:2	NA	NA	NA      	NA      	NA      	NA	NA	NA      	NA              	NA	NA
125,100:3	7	15	Zinc    	Zinc    	Plutonium	Y	1.8	Moderate	Sub-arctic to Temperate	N	Y
125,100:4	0	4	Tungsten	Copper  	Aluminum	?	5.22	Very Violent	Sub-arctic to Arctic	N	N
125,100:5	0	43	Tin     	Lead    	Gold     	?	1.08	Calm    	Sub-arctic      	N	N
123,101:1	0	15	Magnesium	Rodnium 	Plutonium	?	0.86	Calm    	Tropical to Inferno	Y	Y
123,101:2	34	20	Lead    	Chromium	Promethium	Y	2.5	Moderate	Temperate to Searing	Y	Y
123,101:3	0	34	Antimony	Magnesium	Lead    	?	16.9	Very Violent	Arctic to Tropical	Y	N
123,101:4	0	49	Mercury 	Tungsten	Iron    	?	13.7	Very Violent	Sub-arctic to Temperate	Y	Y
123,101:5	0	23	Chromium	Zinc    	Mercury  	?	0.96	None    	Sub-arctic      	N	N
123,101:6	0	55	Chromium	Promethium	Gold    	?	0.81	Calm    	Sub-arctic      	N	N
123,101:7	0	23	Aluminum	Gold    	Platinum	?	0.6	None    	Sub-arctic      	N	N

We set down at the coordinates we were told, 17N x 162E.

The ruins are literally right next door. They contain a message. The author of the message seems to be report about some sort of trouble with tribbles infestation and a request for more supplies from someplace they call "Colony Control" at 16S x 20W on planet 4 of system 118,146. I make a note of this as a future destination.

OH SHIT, this one's aggressive, guys! We subdue it, tag it, collect it, and move on.

Another example of an aggressive lifeform, though this one didn't just attack when we moved up next to it, it actually stopped floating, came down to the surface, moved towards our TV, and then started taking bites out of our plant friend.

Artifacts you've already analyzed will be known to you when you chance across additional copies of them in other ruins.

Note the distinct lack of entry here in the Cargo menu. I'd previously forgotten to mention that Floating or Flying lifeforms cannot be collected. At least, not unless they decide to land, which is entirely up to the AI, and not worth banking on.

[spoiler=a few other interesting screens]

Here I derped and hit Collect before hitting Record Data, but it was a duplicate anyway. Enjoy the slightly different message from what was seen previously.

I only make two trips out in the vehicle, mineral density is low, there aren't many ruins around, and fuck the alien life forms. It's disappointing rolling back with only 76% or 47% cargo capacity collection, but what can you do? I blast off, and I'm not terribly interested in landing again in a different spot.

I'll pose a question to the readers here. Should we:

Hit up 123,101:6 to go mining? Gold, Promethium, and Chromium are all pretty valuable, and 55% mineral density sounds pretty appealing, especially given Calm weather (fewer storms), no lifeforms, and low gravity (less fuel expended in launch/land).

Visit system ~122,108? (The blue star a few clicks upward from our current position on the starmap.)

Your suggestion here.

Edited December 9, 2014 by Balcerzak

[Balcerzak]

Smallish update here, because I'm impatient, and addicted. Don't take this as a sign that you shouldn't still chime in with suggested courses of activity, and hey, maybe I'll even throw it into a topic poll. But in the absence of feedback, I'll just pick a path and start along on it. If feedback happens, I'll try to work that idea into the current plan of action underway. Anyway, on the plus side, now that most of the important bits of interface and general game flow have been covered, the updates should get a little more streamlined, and I can cover more ground with less images. Until space combat/communications happens, I'm having trouble thinking of anything else new that would crop up warranting a lot of explanation or elaboration.

Without further ado, then, I need to state that while I was tinkering with my spreadsheet of planets and useful information about them, I got the bright idea to implement an automated formula that would check if I should colonize the planet. I'm tossing it in here, with cell addresses replaced with the variable they refer to. I'm just using the standard OpenOffice functions, nothing too fancy.

=IF(AND($Gravity<2;OR($Weather="None";$Weather="Calm";$Weather="Moderate");$Oxygen="Y";$Water="Y";OR(ISNUMBER(SEARCH("Temperate";$Temperature));ISNUMBER(SEARCH("Tropical";$Temperature))));"Y";"N")

I was quite surprised to see that I already overlooked a potential colony world! As such, we depart from orbit around the 2nd planet here in the system and head to our lucky candidate, the 1st planet. I pull up the Sensors and Analysis one more time to double-check, but things look good!

Not one to just go on the data alone, our intrepid Captain chooses a landing spot, 31N x 16W, determined to set foot on the planet and confirm things personally. Also to plunder it of minerals, but mostly to confirm things personally. A total of two trips out in the TV, and the final conclusion is that, yes, it's technically habitable, it's certainly not a resort vacation world with its searing temperature and coarse features, not to mention the complete lack of natural life. The second trip was a close call, making it back to the ship on reserve power, as the mountainous terrain really took a toll on the ability to roam the landscape freely.

Satisfied, we go ahead and submit the recommendation formally, and when asked to name the planet, give it a name suitable for its inhospitable, desert-like condition.

Then, wanting to get a bit more cargo in the hold, the plan was to go to the 6th planet from the sun here to go mining, as on paper it seemed a good idea... when searching for a place to set the ship down though... There were absolutely no mountainous areas to be found, the entire surface appearing to be a nearly uniform low elevation, with corresponding unlikelihood of finding mineral deposits. The trip was aborted, and we rerouted our attention to the 7th planet of the system, whose minerals were not quite as good, but still pretty high tier on the chart.

This actually looks like a planet, so we set down at 12S x 145W and make two quick and productive runs, pulling in a 94% and 100% haul.

[spoiler=new minerals]

I didn't remember how much Nickel sold for, so rolled up to see if I should swap out some Aluminum, wasted effort, that.

For some reason every time I found a platinum deposit I kept trying to remember where I heard this catchphrase about being "platinum mad".

Then it's back to home (notice that the planets have moved around in their orbits!)

No notice worth noticing.

Here's our first glance at the Evaluation area, and it turns out that, no, I didn't screw up and get penalized because the temperature was only ever Tropical at the poles (presumably, considering how searing it was near the equator). A 35000 MU deposit has been made to our account, and that is definitely a bright point for any ship captain. I kind of feel like I scammed them, though, considering it's just the next system over, and our flare sensor indicated that sun was likely to go boom boom as well, but I'm not going to turn away free money by pointing this out to Interstel.

Then it's off to the Trade Depot to liquidate.

When I hit up the Ship Configuration, my shopper's urge got the better of me. While I'd definitely planned on selling Engines level 1 and replacing them with better ones, I'd initially only been thinking of Class 4. Seeing that I had six figures, I made an impulse buy, realized I had neither saved, nor backed up said save, paused the game for several minutes with buyer's remorse and tried to figure out how I was going to outfit the rest of the upgrades I'd also been hoping to get installed. I went back to the drawing board (aka spreadsheet), looked at my remaining assets, my wishlist, and tried to figure out how to make ends meet. It involved selling all of the Plutonium I'd been hording (and let's face it, meeting the Thrynn wasn't the top of my priority list as I didn't want to have to remove Kitty temporarily from the roster just so we could communicate). I also had to sell off almost half our stock of Endurium (33.1 cubic meters out of 71.0). That said, doing the math, the better engines will still allow us to go nearly 1.5 times as far.

[spoiler=me doing the math]Assuming the numbers I have for the efficiencies of the engine classes are correct, with Class 1 using 0.49 m³ per coordinate travelled, Class 2 0.41, Class 3 0.33, Class 4 0.25, and Class 5 0.16, our crew could have made it roughly 145 coordinates on a Class 1 engine with 71 cubic meters, but can travel roughly 235 coordinates on a Class 5 with 37.9 cubic meters of fuel. Hell, the 71 cubic meters would only take us 284 coordinates in the Class 4, so yes, while we technically did lose out on some potential range in that case, this iss an upgrade we won't have to worry about doing in the future now, and we'll find/buy more Endurium in days to come to offset the loss anyway.

With my carefully planned fallback, I pick up Class 2 of everything else: Shields, Armor, Missiles, Lasers. (I'm not sure if I need both missiles and lasers just yet, but I'd hate to run into a Gazurtoid ship and only have missiles, you know?)

We're kind of on a shoestring budget from here until our next windfall though, so those "topping off" training courses I mentioned to Severian are going to have to wait.

[spoiler=starmap]

Here's the latest starmap. Also, for a simple breakdown/recap of clues we have received but not yet investigated:

That wormhole exit near 190,190 that leads to another wormhole that leads to Old Earth.

The Black Egg Device even farther upspin and coreward.

Colony Control near 120, 145.

The aliens near 175, 95.

The dangerous androids near 145, 100.

The disappearances of spacecraft near 135, 85.

Suspected Elowan space.

Suspected Thrynn space.

Investigating the Flux nexus near "The Cross" constellation.

Jaunting about through the other fluxes listed in the bulletin.

Other options include:

Just generally scoping out some systems for planets of interest.

You think area X (for any value of X) on the map looks cool and want me to check it out.

Given that we now have both a) a well-trained crew and b) a spacecraft that might actually survive a battle, and is definitely suited for roaming far and wide, no option is off the table. (I think we have just enough fuel to even make a round trip to the Black Egg planet if I did my math right, and we take some wormholes.) So please, if you have any strong feelings, any at all, or hell, even mild feelings, feel free to speak up, otherwise I'll keep chugging along at my own pace.

[Original Alear]

Colony Control is a place that was mentioned in the ruins, right? I'm kind of curious about what's up there. That being said, my preference for that location is very weak.

Oh, and something else I've been forgetting to ask constantly: what do the circles (black edge and light green filled) represent? If I had to guess, the black edge circles represent alien territory boundaries?

[Balcerzak]

Colony Control is a place that was mentioned in the ruins, right? I'm kind of curious about what's up there. That being said, my preference for that location is very weak.

Oh, and something else I've been forgetting to ask constantly: what do the circles (black edge and light green filled) represent? If I had to guess, the black edge circles represent alien territory boundaries?

Exactly so, yes. Control Colony was the location mentioned in that request for supplies in the message found in the ruins on the 2nd planet in the neighboring system. Perhaps I should have tagged each unsolved mystery by what type of clue gave it to us. I think I'll do this when I update the list in the future. Also, I only saw this after I already had a pretty productive session earlier today, that will probably provide material for a few updates. I can certainly make Colony Control the next objective though!

Oh, about the green areas on the map, those represent nebulae, which obscure vision (I think), prevent you from raising your shields, and may have other effects I cannot recall at the moment. As for the larger black circles, I'm not 100% sure, but I'd been under the assumption that they indicated the zones of control held by various alien races.

[Rehab]

I'm. gonna be reading this thread. Just gonna, take a bit to absorb the first post, and, stuff.

[Balcerzak]

Absolutely, take your time. This thing is like a giant space opera open world rpg. It's dense, and I can appreciate that. Once you get yourself a little immersed though...

Also, here's a mini-update. I'd decided on a roughly chronological attempt at tracking down the hints we'd been given, beginning with the Interstel Notices. For me that meant investigating the case of the disappearing ships at 135,84. I head on down there not fully paying attention, and get sucked through a wormhole.

[spoiler=you can see the wormhole fluxing about better on the other side maybe]

I'd forgotten what the continuum flux points looked like, and was taken unaware, but they're sort of wobbly globs of light that move around. If you're zipping along at a high clip, you can easily miss them, so if you're hoping to find one, going along with a few discreet clicks of your arrow key is the safer bet than simply holding it down. Okay, so it was a wormhole, I guess for an inexperienced navigator, suddenly finding themselves Rock knows where and not being able to spot the tell tale signs to find the entrance on the other side this could be a huge deal, but Nightmare knows his shit. Mystery solved guys, time to head ho--

--oh what the fuck!? eclipse informs the captain her sensors are picking up activity. "On screen" reveals a problem. As the full reports come in, it becomes abundantly clear that this is a big problem.

In between her delivering the preliminary report and then the final analysis, the ship is rocked by massive explosions, as a plasma bolt reams clean through our Class 2 armor like a hot knife through butter, and buries itself deep into the hull. "Sir, their shielding is at least Class 7, and their weaponry is... well, Ether can read you off the damage report and it's not pretty."

"FUCK! Nightmare, get us out of here, pronto!"

"Sir, I'd love to, but the engines aren't responding."

With a grave face, Balcerzak salutes every member of his loyal crew, finishing right before another set of explosions rocks the vessel. "It's been an honor to have served with you, comrades. I couldn't have asked for better..."

Whether he had finished his statement or not, there is no way to know, for at that moment, a hull breech in the vicinity of the bridge sucked the air from his lungs, and as the compromised structural integrity failed, everyone was jettisoned into the cold, dark recesses of space.

*cough*

Thank you, backup save, if you don't mind I'll just...

Edited December 10, 2014 by Balcerzak

[eclipse]

Science Officer eclipse does not take kindly to the captain's joking remarks about how she should analyze his throbbing mass. Looks like that will have to wait until we return to starport.

"Sir, the mass requires microscopic equipment not present on this vessel."

[Original Alear]

Ouch...

Night said that the engines were malfunctioning, even though they still had most of their durability at that time?

(Referring to spoilered pic in particular)

http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Balcerzak/Starflight/update06-011.png

[Balcerzak]

eclipse: That's perfect!

Ouch...

Night said that the engines were malfunctioning, even though they still had most of their durability at that time?

(Referring to spoilered pic in particular)

http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Balcerzak/Starflight/update06-011.png

Notice the two Plasma Bolts that hit our ship between the readout of the Analysis data in that image, where the Engines appear to be just fine, and the next image when the Engine Malfunction goes off. This is really the fault of too many things happening at once, and decisions the game made about timing feedback, IIRC. The instant the second plasma bolt hit (and those two shots were launched from separate ships and hit us at nearly the same time) the Engines' warning light went off and only after that has run to completion and the upper right window is free to return to the full damage readout display does it update to show everything having been pretty much destroyed. IIRC, the trigger for failing systems is some random chance if it has sustained greater than 50% damage. I'm honestly surprised it decided to show the systems failure, or the crew being wounded at all, considering it was simultaneous to the fatal hull breech, but it's probably for playing up the seriousness of the scenario, and letting you enjoy a more frantic set of final moments.

Edited December 10, 2014 by Balcerzak

[Balcerzak]

[spoiler=our intended course]

Captain Balcerzak called a powwow of the entire crew, and they pored over the starmap, their notes of interest (both those gathered from Interstel notices and those from other sources), and they made sure to bear in mind their available stores of fuel. Finally, a route was settled on that would both investigate several of the items of interest, as well as efficiently visit a fair number of systems in a search for colonizeable or profitable mining worlds, all while making sure to leave enough fuel in reserve to deal with unexpected contingencies. The trip would make use of three out of the four linked flux pairs provided by Interstel, only neglecting the one that seemed to lead to the continuum flux nexus in The Cross, so they were somewhat relying on that intel to be valid. In the event one or more of the links fell threw and did not operate as advertised, they'd have to improvise, but everyone agreed they were comfortable with the possibilities.

So, without further ado, the voyage was embarked upon!

[spoiler=journey through the first wormhole]

We cautiously penetrate into system 175,84 while keeping a lookout for alien activity. The Interstel notice wasn't very specific about what we should expect so we carefully and deliberately begin the process of checking out the planets in this system. It seemed reasonable and methodical to start from the inner orbits and work outwards, as the innermost planet was nearest in its orbit to us, and the outermost was in good position to let us quickly exit the system after checking it out.

As we pull up to orbit, however, and unidentified object causes us to cease efforts, and instead switch to tactical view, to try to determine the source of the disturbance.

There's nothing in sight, but Marthur informs us we're recieving a distress signal, and I instruct a friendly response to be sent. (Not pictured in the interest of saving space are some intermediate images where I have to explicitly choose this by navigating the menus and picking "Respond", which replaced the default "Hail" option in the comms menu, and then adopt a posture of either "Friendly", "Hostile", or "Obsequious".) As you can see in the image, once communications has been engaged, the options are as follows: issue a statement, ask a question (which brings up a submenu where you decide what to ask), change your posture (the default status is to maintain your initial posture), or to terminate contact. Once you either issue a statement or ask a question, you then have to wait for the response to come back (it would be rude and unproductive to keep spamming them with messages without listening to the reply). Sometimes it's hard to get a word in edgewise though, if the other party takes control of the pace of the conversation and you are the one always responding. That's luckily not the case here, as the distress call appears to be a prerecorded message.

...a message from nearly 1000 years ago, at that. An Old Empire ship had been damaged and forced to emergency land on the first planet in the system, and the pieces fall into place as to why we were interrupted just as we were initiating orbit procedures for said planet.

I instruct Marthur to ask for more details, despite it being a recording. It couldn't hurt at the very least. (Not picture are navigating the menu choices for the options of what questions to ask, which include asking about "Themselves", "Other races", "The Old Empire", "The Ancients", of for "General Infomation".) Fortunately, the continuation of the message yielded just the new clue hoped for, actual coordinates! The landing site would be 22N x 97W. While not terribly hopeful of finding a surviving colony of descendants, at the very least the crew could hope to find more information amongst the wreckage, or perhaps even scavenge some material from the crashed ship.

eclipse runs the standard sensors sweeps, and exclaims in a startled voice "Captain, this planet... It's actually habitable! We should be sure to recommend it for colonization after we've finished following up on this lead."

After a hurried landing to the specified coordinates, Balcerzak is hit by a golfball-sized hailstone upon rolling out in the TV, sustaining minor injuries. The hills are covered in yellow snow, however its widespread and uniform and not the "yellow snow" of crude, juvenile humor.

[spoiler=interesting alien specimens]

It took quite a bit of roaming around before the crew finally chanced on the ruins they were looking for. There was indeed a message, and it was promptly recorded after having been read, as its contents seemed vital. The crashed ship in question was the Noah 9 colony vessel, on the way to their designated colony world of "Heaven". They had sent ahead Mechans to prepare it, and they are standing by in Code Blue, to initiate Code Red upon the arrival of the Noah 9 vessel, upon which the colony would have full control of the Mechans. However the ship was sabotaged by "Laytonites" (perhaps an internal faction ideologicaly oppose to colonization?) necessitating the emergency crash landing on this fortunately habitable planet. At any rate, this is huge news! Arth was the Noah 2 colony, so learning of other Noah expeditions is fantastic, and Interstel is sure to be ecstatic when we report this in the Notices. (NB: you don't actually get a chance to post your own messages, but I'm ignoring that for the sake of better storytelling.)

[spoiler=the message]

Upon returning to their ship, the crew is puzzled how they'd initially overlooked the crash-site they'd been looking for, but they shrug it off and chalk it up to the weather. It had been overcast and hailing, after all.

The super-photonic probe bearing news of the suitability of this world for colonization was released, as was the chosen name of Silesia, for this rather freezing planet, as it seemed suitable.

[spoiler=sample scanning of the planets in this system]

The farthest planet from the sun seemed like it would be a good place to mine, with 47% minerals and the lithosphere composed mainly of Cobalt, Silver, and Rodnium, minerals which either fetched a good price, or would prove useful for repairing the ship should it get damaged. Even close to the equator, though, at 24S x 120E, the temperatures were subfreezing, and the bitter red snow was whipped about in a windstorm, making the expedition less than pleasant. A single trip out coming back with a 100% load in the TV was deemed enough, they were still incredibly early in their overall journey, there would be no point to overfill the cargo holds here.

[spoiler=minerals]

Upon breaking orbit to depart the system, Ether piped up in surprise! The sensors for testing the stability of the star systems with regards to possible flares were coming back with unexpected results. The sun here would flare within 60 days! In just the few days they'd spent exploring the innermost and outermost worlds of the system, something had changed, and drastically. In light of this, it was somewhat regrettable that they had logged Silesia for colonization, as this system was worse off than Arth's. Nothing could be done about the matter now, though.

eclipse informed the crew that her sensors were picking up motion just as Nightmare was steering the ship into the continuum flux opening. Perhaps the readings she was getting now were the true cause of the "alien activity" reported in this vicinity, and not (as had been assumed) the distress call emanating from Noah 9? There was no time to reverse course though and check it out. They'd be back this direction again anyway.

The in-game starmap quite conveniently logs any flux pairs you travel between, which is handy.

From here on out, our science officer is constantly reporting indications of movement and other vessels in our general vicinity. Now quite a bit further afield than before, or at least feeling that way after traversing the wormhole, coupled with the fact that these readings weren't anything they'd been expecting or warned about from Interstel, the crew agrees, for the moment at least, to rely on their Class 5 engines to try to avoid contact for as long as possible. There was no way of knowing what kind of vessels they might run into contact with here.

The only planet in this system, amazingly enough, seems to be suitable for colonization. The crew decides to set down first and check it out from the ground, just to be sure.

After a rather unproductive run in the TV, coming back with only 40% cargo, Balcerzak submits the report of the not exactly fruitful world with the suggested name of Thracia.

The next system on the list was a yellow sun with 3 unexciting planets in orbit.

The system after that had absolutely no worlds at all!

[spoiler=not particularly exciting]

The following star was almost a third strike, as the first planet surveyed was unexciting, however the second...

...was a Goldilocks world, with a nice mineral density and pretty choice elements at that.

In fact, the minerals were so dense not only were they immediately viewable from the landing site, but the TV made it back to the ship 96% full while still having 70% energy remaining!

This rather fruitful world was christened Lenster, in contrast of the previous Thracia.

The final system for this leg of the voyage was a pretty expansive one, with several planets of varying types and compositions. The outer two were nothing particularly special, however when Balcerzak ordered them to initiate orbit of the fourth planet from the sun, things became interesting.

[spoiler=not special]

"Sir... there's something preventing us from orbiting!"

To be continued...

[Original Alear]

Holy fuck, cliffhanger.

EDIT-Oh, and I wonder if the ship that's preventing orbit is somehow responsible for the flares...

Edited December 10, 2014 by Severlan

[Balcerzak]

Marthur is instructed to hail the unknown vessel, following our introduction it instructs us to respond, and then begins peppering us with seemingly nonsensical questions. What kind of question is "35?" anyway? Understandably we screw up along the way and are met with the following:

: Permission to orbit denied.

Ouch, that Class 3 missile put a huge dent in our Class 2 shields.

Through no fault of Nightmare's navigating (really it was just me being rusty at the game, I think), we're hit by another pair of missiles, which begins to chisel away at our Class 2 armor, but then we manage to thread the needle and start dodging properly. Simply maneuvering far enough away from the enemy ship that they fall off the (zoomed out) screen will end an encounter.

Having given up on orbiting that planet, we check out the other three here quickly. Nothing special.

We're on our way out of the system, however, when what had been postponed as long as possible ends up occurring, we end up running into one of the mysterious ships that eclipse had noted roving around the system.

Marthur hails them and they respond. It's the Velox. Cautious relief spreads through the crew. We should be able to hold peaceful conversation with these aliens, unlike the Gazurtoid or the Uhlek. Even if it had been Thrynn or Elowan, our current crew would have made that an awkward encounter, so the Velox was probably the best of all possible outcomes.

: The you aliens trespassing in ours the space. Most Gracious Grossness of August Queen perhaps forgiving if you are pay tribute of 3 Arth energy crystals right away, by Jove. Agreeing?

...okay, they're extorting us, but we can afford this. We send a pod over with 3 cubic meters of Endurium.

: Is the you alien a part of Old Empire?

Marthur relays that, yes, we are indeed. It seems only proper to consider any of the Noah colonies as such.

: Not trying the funny stuff alien tresspassers, superior Veloxi most powerful.

...perhaps that wasn't the answer they were looking for, as we're met with a somewhat hostile response. Seeking to calm the situation, Marthur makes use of the noted Thrynn tact for diplomacy and attempts to smooth things over. (I choose to make a Statement here.)

: As representatives of the peoples of Arth we extend our best wishes and our hope for equitable relations in the future.

: If you is showing proper respect for distinguished Veloxi charming then everyone is happy as bivalve mollusk.

It seems to have paid off, and the Velox appear mollified. We take this opportunity to question them about the old empire, trying to figure out how we ruffled their... carapace with our earlier reply.

: Veloxi is extreme delightful the Old Empire was wiped up. The Empire was many scoundrel activity too naughty.

That's pretty vague, but we make a note of it and move on, asking them about themselves.

: The best of questions and happily answering. We Veloxi is ancient and prestige. Illustious Veloxi Empire too old the imagine. Us is civilized the most.

: Superior Veloxi majestic are oldest empire. 100,000 years the long time. Assuredly you is barbarian upstart infidel.

We then make a general request for information but their patience was apparently at an end. As they proceed to scan our vessel, tremors of nervousness run through the crew; the rustling noise this produces from our Elowan member is oddly comforting. However, they allow us to freely depart without firing upon us.

We leave the system and are on our way back to the wormhole, to begin our return voyage when we run into another encounter.

Another Veloxi vessel.

I remember to have eclipse scan it this time, to give us a better idea of what we're dealing with, in case the worst happens and things go sour. Class 3 equipment, they're probably the species responsible for that drone orbiting the planet. Well, it's not as if much additional corroboration was required beyond their extensive presence here, but still...

: You is cooperating with Veloxi jim dandy and maybe we is nice guy the not killing you.

That's a not-so-veiled threat, and not exactly friendly behaviour. Marthur attempts to defuse the situation and seems to be making the right plays.

: You are probably think Veloxi is too smart. No wonder. All Veloxi are exceptional cunning the brain.

After this follows another request for tribute, which we grudgingly obey. Our Class 2 gear isn't enough to really let us survive a firefight, most likely, though we could probably manage an escape if they didn't knock out our engines first. Still, it's better to try to keep relations from turning hostile, there's so much we could try to learn from the Velox.

: You are coming to worship of Illustious Queen of Veloxi Grand Lovely?

The crew looks around quizzically for a moment, that hadn't been their intention from the start, but Marthur assures us that proper protocol would be to agree, so Balcerzak nods and allows him to transmit as such.

: Is you killing the Spemins?

This is another head-scratcher, as far as the proper response. We've yet to have contact with the Spemin, but we don't know what the relations between Spemin and Velox are, and it might be better to tell a white lie here if they don't get along. However, we apparently are taking too long discussing things amongst ourselves, as eclipse notes that the Velox have initiated a scan of our vessel. Marthur issues a hurried truthful declaration that we haven't killed any Spemin, to which comes the same somewhat aggressive statement about "Not trying the funny stuff alien tresspassers, superior Veloxi most powerful," as we'd gotten in the previous encounter. We attempt to defuse this by asking them more about themselves, as that line of questioning was previously indicated to be something the Velox are keen on answering.

: A glorious Veloxi worship exceptionally grossness of gracious queen. Center of all Veloxi life the worship.

A further request for general information is met with a termination of communications, and we part our ways.

However, soon enough again, we encounter another scouting party. We must have spent all our good luck in evading encounters on the voyage out, leaving none for the return trip. The standard initial hailing begins with a request for identification, though we're pretty damn sure it's more Velox.

: We is Veloxi the everyday. I being Captain Sh'zeksi of exceptionally pleasant vessel Tsesh'xi. Now perhaps the information exchanging?

Their next transmission quickly comes in though and repeats the now standard request for tribute. At a current net loss of 9 cubic meters of fuel, we're starting to feel the crunch of these encounters with the Velox nickle-and-diming us. We've still got plenty for the voyage, but this unexpected drain on our resources makes everyone feel better that flex had been budgeted in to account for such possibilities. A statement seems in order here, we wouldn't want to appear too pushy or forward by necessarily just bombarding them with questions continually.

: It is our hope that our peoples will enjoy a long and mutually beneficial relationship.

They scan us, presumably making sure our shields are lowered and that our weapons are unarmed, before replying.

: Of course, Veloxi are superior all the time. Agreeing?

It feels a bit like grovelling, but we agree. Perhaps we should be obsequious with them, instead of striving for a friendly posture, it certainly seems to be what they expect from outsiders. We don't actually change our stance, but maybe next time we'll try it from the start. At any rate, our reply pleases the other captain, and he echos the previous sentiment about everyone being as happy as a clam. We ask for general information now, and the reply initially sets everyone abuzz.

: We are longtime receiving Old Empire distress call from system 175,94. Of course Veloxi could caring less.

A new clue! Except not... as we go to record this information, we note that this was the system where Noah 9 had been forced to put down, and we already responded to this distress signal. Oh well. The discussion currently being about the Old Empire, we ask them more about it.

: Old Empire was try colonize the many planets. Always the expanding. They was using drones called Nomad to collecting datas. Many drones is still coming around Veloxi space. Is annoy Veloxi too much.

Mmm, interesting. We make a note of this, and ask them if they have any knowledge about the ancients.

: None the information. Veloxi a not know.

Disappointing, but understandable. What about the other races?

: Other races small important. Veloxi are number one importance. Other races not even knowing prophecy of egg. Barbarians certainly.

This has been going well, and to thank them, and to also encourage continued good rapport, we issue a statement.

: There is a lot we can learn from each other. Please convey to your leaders our sincere wishes for peace and friendship.

Unfortunately this seems to have perhaps annoyed them by suggesting they could learn from us as well, as it's met with the same "Superior Veloxi majestic are oldest empire. 100,000 years the long time. Assuredly you is barbarian upstart infidel." we encountered in an earlier conversation. Thinking to get things back on favorable ground, and maybe to hear more of this "prophecy of the egg", we ask them about themselves, but apparently we have worn through their patience. They cut communications and we depart.

We make it to the wormhole with no further issue.

[spoiler=the spacemap as a reminder of location and surroundings]

Balcerzak is torn between a temptation to explore the nearby nebula, though it was not in the intial plans. However after having Nightmare dip inside slightly, sticking their toes in it, he changes his mind and resumes the original course.

There is some motion detected, some sort of alien activity in the vicinity, but we slip into the first system of the four nearby stars without incident. Its sole world is unappealing.

Next system is likeways pretty boring.

Shortly after leaving the second system of the four, though, that alien contact catches up to us! We're no longer deep in Velox space, so who could it be now?

To be continued~

(Yeah, sorry for the cliffhangers, but I'm trying to keep updates to <50 images, and pacing, and it's hard to find decent transition points. Cliffhangers are a healthy practice in moderation though, and you should be used to them from other media.)

[Original Alear]

Ya I didn't mean to sound like I was protesting it. It's more than fine.

[eclipse]

As long as it isn't a Golden Sun-esque cliffhanger, it's fine~! According to the screenshots, it looks like Nightmare and I were pretty good at dodging hail!

EDIT: And Ether, too!

EDIT the second: Missed the Veloxi exchanges. Their language is. . .awkward, to say the least. Thanks for translating!

Edited December 11, 2014 by eclipse