how about this story?

Species suggestions, story ideas and contributions.
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orionzzz
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how about this story?

#1 Post by orionzzz »

Mankind has just started exploring the solar system. They have colonized the moon and they have just completed of a huge self sufficient cylindrical space colony between earth and the moon where the gravitation pull of the moon and the earth cancels each other. 10 million people inhabit this space colony. This space station will be the base for the construction of future space faring vessels. A new spaceship named Explorer was also completed in the station just as the colony became fully operational. This spaceship has incorporated a reversed engineered warp drive developed from a remnant of a UFO crash site. Explorer's maiden voyage was highly successful as it managed to explore most of the solar system even to the outer reaches of Neptune.

A few months passed and suddenly space probes planted around the outer reaches of the solar system detected a few unidentified space faring vehicles. Fearing an invasion, the people feared their worst. However, the visitors turned out to be peaceful beings. They had noticed the Explorer from their sensors and noticed that it is unlike any ship they knew from their databases and so decided to come and investigate. Diplomatic relations were established with the alien race called the XYZ and the aliens imparted to us some of their space faring technology as an act of goodwill.

The next decade saw an explosion of technological advances in science, technology and space exploration. The space colony began churning out space vessels and small colonies were established on mars and venus.

While mining Mars, some inhabitants discovered several alien artifacts as well as some murals in some of the subterranian tunnels. Discussion with the XYZ pertaining to these artifacts revealed that there was actually an aincient race that preceded the humans and they lived on Mars. As the solar system is on the far reaches of the XYZ's known galaxy, they could not provide us much more information except that from the murals, the martians were exterminated by another alien species. Also the XYZ informed us that the artifacts we dug up were left by an aincient supremely powerful alien species they called the aincients which somehow vanished from the known universe. Such rare artifacts are scattered all throughout the galaxy. It was gathered that the martians were highly intelligent and able to utilise the functions of the artifacts, though not enough to manufacture them. It was also deduced that from the number of artefacts found, that they were actively searching for such artefacts around the galaxy considering that they are quite rare. XYZ decided that it was time to intruduce the humans to the galactic council which comprised of XX alien spices. XYZ also updated the council of the findings on mars.... so in this story you can continue to dwelve into politics, hidden agenda among council member species, and also the unknown marauder that wiped out all martians as well as the story of the aincients... and so the game continues...

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pd
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#2 Post by pd »

Connected to the Orions how? Who said humen are in?

I'll say it again, please make yourself familiar with this game first, befor opening threads. Thanks!

marhawkman
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#3 Post by marhawkman »

And read the existing threads!
Computer programming is fun.

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utilae
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#4 Post by utilae »

Orionzzz is making too many threads lately.

Though I would like to see more activity in the Story forum. I don't see a point in limiting how many posts are in the story thread, it just limits creativity.

Tyreth
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#5 Post by Tyreth »

utilae wrote: Though I would like to see more activity in the Story forum. I don't see a point in limiting how many posts are in the story thread, it just limits creativity.
The rules for the story forum wll be changing soon (within a week or two most likely). There will be more room for posting new threads on various topics when that happens.

proxy
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#6 Post by proxy »

Since the back story was locked and i didn't want to start a new thread, I thought I'd insert my story suggestion which was:

I really enjoyed the B5 series, especially the chaos/order theme they had between the Shadow and Vorlon races. Perhaps rather than simply good vs evil, that would make a better theme?

marhawkman
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#7 Post by marhawkman »

proxy wrote:Since the back story was locked and i didn't want to start a new thread, I thought I'd insert my story suggestion which was:

I really enjoyed the B5 series, especially the chaos/order theme they had between the Shadow and Vorlon races. Perhaps rather than simply good vs evil, that would make a better theme?
The problem is it requires using somebody else's ideas. thus we can't really release it that way.
Computer programming is fun.

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#8 Post by SmellyTerror »

Some explanation for several races emerging at the same time with (roguhly) the same tech would be a very good thing, IMO. (See drek's post for an example: viewtopic.php?t=817).

I realise it doesn't *have* to be done, but such a staggeringly unlikely set-up in so many space-strategy games has always ruined the immersion for me. In orionzzz's story, wouldn't we expect the other civilisations to be far more advanced than the Humans, the latest race on the block? I mean, even if they've only been out there for couple of years, and our turns are a year each, shouldn't they be (at the very least) a couple of turns ahead of us?

Same goes for any combination of species, Humans being in it or not. What are the chances of several species developing the same level of tech at exactly the same time? Bugger all. So a story that takes that into account is a good thing.

There are a lot of possibilities, so not using one just seems a bit lazy.

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Geoff the Medio
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#9 Post by Geoff the Medio »

SmellyTerror wrote:What are the chances of several species developing the same level of tech at exactly the same time? Bugger all. So a story that takes that into account is a good thing.
In sandbox or multiplayer, no story is needed, as it's just a contrived, somewhat even starting point for a game. In a campaign or offical story-based scenario however, there's no need for all empires to start with equal tech levels, so the story doesn't need to justify that (not) happening.

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utilae
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#10 Post by utilae »

I think that the player should be able to choose each race to be in a game and also choosing the age (tech level) of each race. Of course randomness would be an option, as well as having all races be the same tech level at the start.

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#11 Post by SmellyTerror »

Geoff the Medio wrote:In sandbox or multiplayer, no story is needed, as it's just a contrived, somewhat even starting point for a game.
Well, the storyline already given seems to be a set up for a standard, sandbox game, and it's certainly the usual way of playing such games. Isn't that why the story will not deal with future events, because it represents the starting position? If it was going to cover some pre-defined campaign, then we would need future events. We don't, so I'm guessing there isn't one.

In any case, the purpose of this forum seems to be to create storyline for the starting state.

Anyway, my point is that it doesn't *have* to be contrived. Lots of people have explained it in various ways. Examples:

1. MOO3 had the races emerging from imprisonment by the bad guys.

2. Ferion (web-based game) has the various races transported to an arena by a vastly powerful race, and given tech to unlock.

3. drek's idea was to have the information arks arrive at the various races simultaneously, launching their space race at the same time and with the same tech.

4. I'll post another idea in a separate thread, but there are piles of options.

A set-up story that doesn't make sense is not a good story (eg. my objection to orionzzz's story: the storyline suggests that everyone else would be much more advanced, but then the game actually gives you something completely different). We need to allow for different races playing the game at an equal footing (because that's how the game will usually be played). Explaining the starting position is what a backstory is for, isn't it?

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eleazar
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#12 Post by eleazar »

I agree the game would be stronger with a plausable backstory.
I believe that's the plan, though it's not currently under active development.

For an optimum experience, much of the text (tech descriptions, random events, etc.) will eventually have to coordinate with or at least not contradict the backstory of the main game. Players will generally assume that the situation is essentially the same in multi-player.

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