Game Play

The primary responsibility of the station is to act as a center of control within it's sector of space.

Initial state

When a new game is loaded the player is given their starter station and a cut-scene should be created to give the player some background on why they are in the sector of space and what their general goals are. The player can choose to follow these guidelines or not, as they are given broad discretion to fulfill the primary responsibility; which is to maintain a presence in the sector.

The station should come with the bare essential plots already assigned and populated as well as some starter credits and officers/crew.

The beginning objectives (missions) should act as a tutorial on how to advanced the game and should have topics that include:

• Increasing crew
• Purchasing/Crewing ships
• Reconnoitering sub-sectors
• Attracting tenants, special characters and guests

Game Play Loop - Beginning

The primary game play loop consists of a player balancing the needs of the station while growing it as to accomplish more and more complex and rewarding tasks. Crew will need to be recruited (and optionally trained), assigned and their services made available to station inhabitants while gathering/procuring the resources or allowing the requisite time to pass for those crew to be made available.

There should always be a balance of the faucets provided and the sinks present. The player should perpetually be low on resources required to do the next new task and should be seeking more and more complex ways of generating required resource while constantly looking for more and more efficient ways of providing services for their station.

As much micromanagement that can be made optional, should be, while retaining fine control for those who would wish to have that be a part of their game play.

While waiting for tasks to be complete the loop should provide entertaining observations of the station and the interactions of it's inhabitants.

Game Play Loop - Mid-game

By this time the more trivial elements of running the station have the option of being efficient and optimized. Most of the time spent at this phase of the game should be exploring the sector and gathering resources to continue to grow the station and expand it's capabilities.

Missions will play a vital role in informing the player on how to achieve bigger payout for objectives but often with greater penalties for failure.

In this section, end-game story arches should be discoverable allowing the player to choose from them which they wish to peruse.

Game Play Loop - End Game

At this stage the sector map has more or less been fully explored, the station is at full growth and the player has a heavy influence in the sector. The focus of the remainder of the game is observing the interactions of simulated people on their station and progressing the story arches presented as teasers in the mid-game.

Story arches should follow popular episodic science fiction media and allow the player to form simulated relationships with characters in the game world that should respond to these developments. Not all interactions will be positive and should be based on how the player interacts with those characters.

There should be very little time invested in the day to day workings of the station and the focus should only return to those tasks when a random event or an objective failure causes a disruption in the simulation.

Once all objectives, story arches and exploration has been completed. The only thing remaining will be maintaining the station and observing interactions with simulants.