Aug 042010
 

Just so everyone knows we’re not just twiddling our thumbs, we have the following plans to resurrect SC after a rough month of heavy downtime:

  1. Finish the new space system that was discussed a few months ago. The principle features of the system are:
    • A new, smaller, more true-to-life scale for sectors. Mostly there will be one planet to a sector, and ships will actually be traveling at sublight speeds. Yes, this means a lot more sectors.
    • A sort of hierarchical cluster system for intersector travel. Instead of going to the New Earth sector to find New Earth, Telex, etc., you’ll instead go to a gateway sector, from which you’ll be able to travel directly to New Earth or Telex or any of the other destinations currently in Sector 21. Again, a lot more sectors. But no worries, travel between the common destinations you know and love will not really take any longer. This is to give space more of a geography, plus it’ll give certain sectors a heavy strategic value.
    • Sector clusters will vary in how heavily they are patrolled by the controlling alliance’s navy, and how resource-rich they are. In general, less safe areas will contain more valuable resources. Conversely, this means that capital sectors and other major populated locations will be safer than they are now. This allows for PvP to be both possible and entirely voluntary.
    • Resources (particularly ones like asteroids, uncharted debris, and artifacts) will no longer be “everywhere” but will instead be linked to particular resource points. Many points are permanent property of one alliance or another, others will be influenced by Conquest, and still others will be outright capturable in PvP conflicts. This will give conflict a material benefit but also allow each player to decide how much they want to personally risk.
    • From a game design standpoint, the nature of sector clusters will allow us to easily expand the game world to add unique places to visit and explore. It’ll make SC almost a whole new game, and that’ll be exciting.
  2. The other part of our plan is to launch a new plot advancement arc and re-commit to a goal of holding a planned event every weekend as much as our schedules will allow.

I can’t give a specific ETA, but it should be safe to say that the new space system will be launched and we’ll be holding scheduled events by the end of the month.

 Posted by at 2:42 am

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