Exploration Concept: Player Personal Colony and First Contact species (Like personal Starbases)

doubleohnine

Just had another FABULOUS idea for Exploration! What two things have we seen in the shows we all want our Captain and crew to be a part of? First Contact and Colonization! For a new STO season we get BOTH! And they both become our personal starbase of sorts, that doesnt need help from your fleet (except a few helping hand doff missions here and there). And since we all love playing Star Trek Barbie Online (admit it), both experiences are fully customizable!

Both features will have a tad of Foundry in them. For Colonization, you start by selecting from 3 different planets. Each toon can only help one planet at a time. Each planet will have pluses and minuses that will become apparent over time. You also select the leadership of the colonization crew, their look, their names, etc (male or female, race is predetermined, as is their personality, so Cryptic knows what sex they are writing for) What we'll be doing is a paper doll effect. Cryptic will write playable missions and doff missions for each path. Path A, B, and C. You make choices for your colony, and as you do, different paths play out. You also get to chose the look and names of rival species or enemies. Same tech that lets foundry authors have contacts say your captains name, we apply names and faces to the characters, and Cryptic writes out their destinies for us. Your ship will run supply missions, protection missions, etc. that are playable, as well as a lot of doffing missions. Colonization unlocks tech, and dilithium, etc as you progress your planet. Sort of mini Civilization in STO. Hopefully Cryptic writes 1 new playable mission for each path every 3 months. They dont have to be big budget feature episodes, just something twice as good as the old generic cluster missions.

First Contact is similar to Colonization, all the same customization, but the decisions to be made are HIGHLY diplomatic in nature, and this new species will be one you eventually bring into the Federation once you've achieved Tier 5 with it. Id say each should last 1.5 years in real time to reach Tier 5, then if the game is still going, Cryptic writes up new mission paths and new planet mats to start over again to start up a new colony and bring another new species into the Federation.

How richly this content rewards you depends on time investment in it. Something significant happens every 3 months, and decisions you make impact the high success or average colony and new species you bring into the Federation, Empire, etc. Everyone will make different choices, and every player will see something unique, visually, as they control the look of the characters in this side story content. Decisions you make, and LOCK IN affect your colony and first contact species. Maybe your decisions set your colony back, cause a disaster that takes time to recover from, and provide different rewards and doff missions based on the decisions made.

Anyone like this idea?

darthkirk

That my friend is a lot of varibles and for each varible a lot of coding, games tend to follow KISS principle, while an okay idea in theory it would be anight mare of coding, plus this is not civ no matter how good that game is

davefenestrator

Dammit Jim, I'm a starship captain not a farmer!

yukonsam

Some people will invest an uncanny amount of time and resources into building a community, and that equals retention -- and, if the system is REALLY good, recruitment.

Other people will ignore it, and that's fine too. Part of moving beyond "game" and into "virtual world" is accepting that not every aspect has to appeal to every player.

Games have finite life cycles. Theme parks show diminishing returns. But virtual worlds? Keep the graphics up-to-date and they can go generational with modest investment and effort.

The core Trek fan base is primed for community-building. They just need the sandbox to do it in.

gradii

yukonsam wrote: »

Some people will invest an uncanny amount of time and resources into building a community, and that equals retention -- and, if the system is REALLY good, recruitment.

Other people will ignore it, and that's fine too. Part of moving beyond "game" and into "virtual world" is accepting that not every aspect has to appeal to every player.

Games have finite life cycles. Theme parks show diminishing returns. But virtual worlds? Keep the graphics up-to-date and they can go generational with modest investment and effort.

The core Trek fan base is primed for community-building. They just need the sandbox to do it in.

I agree with this and the OP. this has a lot of potential and would be worth investing in. Cryptic could have the system use dilithium like fleet starbases so players could pay to speed it up even, make more profit on it like good ferengi!