Yes the 32 light years is a typo. It’s supposed to be more like 3200 light years, or about the distance from the bottom middle of the Orion arm (the arm of the Milky Way where we live!) to the outside tip of the arm. The arm itself is about 10,000 light years long, so I may need to go over my calculations again.
In reality, that is a mind-boggling distance. If however, staying in one arm of our own galaxy doesn’t end up seeming “far enough to be scary” in the story, I will just make it farther. And my ships are nowhere as fast as Star Trek ships.
Telepathy was dropped because it is overpowered. Preston uses his abilities to move his water bubble, manipulate equipment and tools, build/repair things, conduct experiments, and of course he could also use them for combat, to rescue others (as he does in some choices in Episode 1), etc. It’s just too useful. I would struggle to come up with scenarios where the MC wouldn’t logically be able to use the MC’s power, and the whole point is that each power has weaknesses and is useless in some situations.
Empathy isn’t overpowered, but it would give Empathy MCs a lot of extra information that other MCs wouldn’t have. That’s too hard to write around. I can use Telka as the tool to convey this info, and of course, MC as captain can choose to act on it, avoid it, not trust it, etc.
So, speaking of space ships, just how fast can they travel compared to the Star Trek space ships?
Like for example, a Star Trek ship would be able to travel from Point A to Point B in the time frame of hours or even days. Based on that, would the ships in this story take months to do so?
I’m running off to work in a second, but I do have some notes in my notebook where I reviewed Star Trek speeds, and brought my numbers way (way) down from that. I have a conversion somewhere. So I’ll work this all out over the weekend.
Updated it! It’s another short update, but I also reworked the creation a bit, and added a few things that had been requested (squid form, rainbow skin, and a bit more clear selection of how to pick your form).
@VelvetDivine, thanks for posting your character! I’m really digging all the different builds. Did your boss ask the vendor about his two heads? It took a while to code that section and it seemed to be working right but you never know.
@Mewsly, I swapped it out for squid. Even though they are just skins, I still had to run lots of checks for the marketplace scene, as I needed your boss to be the same race as you. It was quite time consuming, more than I had anticipated.
@Taylor_Enean, yep I had discussed that maybe a few days ago? I’m too lazy to go back and check. But yeah empathy was deleted because it duplicated Telka’s abilities. I also deleted Flight, Taunt and Telekinesis (which was too overpowered anyway) because of Trazer, Jaxer and Preston.
Working on clothes shopping and eating/drinking scenes this morning, and later this week I’ll dive into your first real interactions with the crew…although they aren’t your “crew” yet.
Not been able to visit regularly for some time, so I have not seen it.
A shame, it was my preference and style of character (in many games, even if we may not have ‘empathy’ as a power), but I can understand the reasoning.
@Mewsly, we’ll see how many skin checks I end up inserting into Episode 1. Obviously, with fewer checks, it becomes easier to toss in a few additional skin options. I’m hoping just a couple of checks is enough to reinforce in the player’s mind what the MC looks like, and that I can be more sparing with it in future Episodes.
@idonotlikeusernames, Part of it was that I ran out of room on the crew. I want to give myself the option to expand the crew, or possibly replace a member in case of death, desertion, etc., but I felt it was important to start with a very small cast, and develop them more deeply. Basically, I hope to devote an episode to each crew member (and MC) in the early stages of the series.
Preston making a robot actually sounds like a great premise for an Episode at some point. As far as humans go, I just wasn’t feeling it at the time, although there’s always a chance we’ll see one or two introduced in the future to tie into Preston’s story line.
I also dislike the trope where the Federation/Rebel Alliance/group of heroes is basically a bunch of humans with one or two token “different ones.”
Gold Five reporting in…(human)…Gold Two…(human)…Gold Fifteen…(human)…Gold Four…(alien with weird jowls)…Gold Seven (human)…etc
It doesn’t really make sense to me, with all the planets and star systems out there, that 95% of characters in an inter-planetary alliance would be human or identical to human. I think it’s mostly due to budget constraints on TV shows and movies, but with a novel, I don’t have to worry about that stuff, so I decided to go with a more exotic cast.
Name: Ericok
Gender: Male
Uniform: practical uniform
Body Type: close to human
Skin Color: silver
Special Feature 1: web hands
Special Feature 2: spots
Origin: You hail from the planet of Unkimer where it is perfectly acceptable to ask about the other being’s medical history when meeting a stranger.
Name: Marceline
Gender: Female
Uniform: practical uniform
Body Type: almost human
Skin Color: blue
Special Feature 1: pointy ears
Special Feature 2: glow
Origin: You hail from the planet of Hiroth where it is perfectly acceptable to remove all clothing when making an important decision with allies.
I made some progress this week, but between watching Avengers: Infinity War, and working on my CCH Patreon rewards, I didn’t get far enough on Starstreakers to warrant an update tonight. BUT I should have a nice update for next Monday!
In all fairness, I did this in 20 minutes, and it does give me a visual to start going on. I’ll tuck this away in a folder and pull it out in 3 months to see how much my concepts of the characters have changed.
Health: 16
Maximum Health: 16
Special Ability: Phasing
Archetype: Tank
@Eric_Moser God damn, that demo was hilarious. I like the characters already, the customization is good, and I was engaged through the whole thing. Props to you. That was impressive. This’ll be a HIT if you can keep that exact level of hilarity throughout the story. Its an immense challenge, but you’ve shown you could do it.
I will try not to go overboard with the comedy just because I do want some serious moments where the MC has to make tough ethical decisions re: ethics, resources, etc., but this is not hard sci-fi and will not take itself super seriously!
Damn, Ktulu the phasing tank! Definitely a survivable build!
)
That was my thing… thing.
