StarControl Forums
What would be your ideal start of your journey?
Thank you, Vaelzad! I don't really know what part of it was "Trekkie"! And I think it would be a pretty cool way to start things off throwing you right in the middle of intergalactic war!
The whole idea of humanity's first ship boldly going where no man has gone before and making first contact.
Well maybe Trekkie was too harsh a term to use. But to me it feels like something I from Star Trek.
You know that the first warpdrive ship from earth was going to Alpha Centauri (it is the closest star so little choice there... I think) and the warp drive signature alerted the Vulcans and first contact was made. Hence me expressing its Trekkiness...
The difference being is that a rich billionaire invented the warpdrive and not all of humanity pooling resources.
For Star Control a similar story would not do since the Arilou have been watching over earthlings and I find it hard to believe that Earth would make first contact at Alpha Centauri. The closest star system to earth which has probably being studied so extensively for so long that I am sure that they would have detected a space cockroach by that time. But to make first contact there?
Most likely on the way to Alpha Centauri by engaging the warp drive the ship must suffer a grave malfunction and is stuck in a sort of quasi-space (or perpetual warp loop - kind of like stuck in a roundabout) and the Arilou stealthily helps the ship by prodding them out of warp space into another star system (that is not Alpha Centauri) WITH sentient life in the cusp of achieving warp drive but not yet quite there. Another life-form under the supervision/protection of the Arilou.
First contact is made by the Captain of the ship making contact with the aliens and helping each other out to repair the ship and create a new warp-drive combining technology of both worlds.
Both worlds have complementary technology and theories that combined help improve the warp-drive and make it safer and more stable.
In fact the aliens are surprised that the humans were able to get out of warp-space since according to their scientists they should have been stuck in warp-space and stuck forever.
Nice but too Trekkie....
But the "pool all the resources to make a single ship" is also what happened on Vela. Did Star Trek borrow from SCII? 
Hello I think you are misquoting.
In Star Trek it is some rich guy who develops the warp drive. I think there is some history saying he is actually from Alpha Centauri. A spin-off colony from ancient humanity (whatever that means).
In SC2 it is as you said all resources being used to create the precursor 'mule' ship.
Hmmm Trekkie. That would be fun to have something trekkie as a Easter egg.
Another Story Idea
My humble opinion would be to second Human ship made during the time period of SC2. Not hard to fathom as resources were gathered, some made it to Unzervalt (Vela II). The Hierarchy's unstoppable march through that part of the galaxy caused fear and survival instinct kicked in. The colonists used all their resources to include their dwellings and with the assistance of the ship factory built another ship. This time it was like a earth cruiser as they had the schematics to build this type. Modifications had to be made due to less materials. This splinter group struck out because they feared the intrepid captain would not be able to save them. This ship, set out into deep space in search of another planet far from the Hierarchy. The ship was pulled into a worm hole or other space anomaly and was sent to another part of the galaxy. This would make new aliens very plausible. It would be a way to include previous mentioned races as they explored the area of the anomaly and fell in themselves. This could bring up new enemies, new friends, new technology and still keep the integrity of the previous timelines.
^ It's already set in stone that none of the SC2 lore will be used AND there's still Earth in it (the idea, I, personally, don't like).
This is the plan. Andrew, the designer will go through it in the founders area.
This is my "best" start option:
1. Full fledged expedition (scientists, inventors, psychologists, biologists etc.) to a far away star went bad - the ship got caught in "interdimensional fracture/wormhole" and was spat out in a different part of the galaxy.
2. You drift in an unknown space on a damaged vessel with lost hope and depleted supplies when your radar goes "live".
3. You get picked up by a humanoid ("local humans") race "A" that seems not to be aggressive and actually pretty hospitable. They bring you over to their home planet as a guest. But it doesn't feel right as they are stalling your repairs and resupply under the guise of cultural exchange, making you go around their planet showing off their cultural advancements.
4. With time you get scraps of information on the situation in that space locale. It turns out to be that there's a war going on between races A,B,C and races D,E,F. Reasons for war are X, Y and Z. They aren't black and white, not clear cut. It also could be a disinformation by your host.
5. You get the feeling that your guys aren't really on the "right" side of the conflict and you start planning a long and hard escape. Your host don't suspect you yet.
6. Soon, a massive biological attack on your captors home planet happens, during which you and part of your crew manage to escape to an orbital station that's badly damaged and completely wiped out of race "A". You are unaffected, 'cause your biological composition is impervious to that biological weaponry. The attackers leave as suddenly as they appear, not noticing you.
7. You start to rebuild and help to revive race "A", since without their help you'd be a dead meat in a can floating about the unknown space... You find a few race "A" survivors on their home planet (some bright minds hid in a super secret nuclear blast bunker that you found after the bio-attack aftermath... w/e) and re-engineer their DNA with yours to preserve their race. They cooperate and with their help you resurrect the orbital station and build a one of a kind, cutting edge tech space ship to get back home. All you need to do is find that wormhole through which you traveled here. You are not interested in the local conflict. You just want to go home. Meanwhile a very strong bond between humans and race "A" was developed.
8. You go out in an approximate direction of where you came from..... Stuff happens - you meet another race. And another. You can't find the wormhole. Blah blah blah. Some more stuff happens. You're looking for somebody who knows how to get you back home. Conflict plot thickens. Even more stuff happens. You get sucked in the conflict......
9. You find out that you can't get back home the way you came here, but you can through some old nonfunctional Star Gate/Relay/w/e found on the other end of your galaxy sector. All you need to do is make it function.
This is my "best" start option:
1. Full fledged expedition (scientists, inventors, psychologists, biologists etc.) to a far away star went bad - the ship got caught in "interdimensional fracture/wormhole" and was spat out in a different part of the galaxy.
2. You drift in an unknown space on a damaged vessel with lost hope and depleted supplies when your radar goes "live".
3. You get picked up by a humanoid ("local humans") race "A" that seems not to be aggressive and actually pretty hospitable. They bring you over to their home planet as a guest. But it doesn't feel right as they are stalling your repairs and resupply under the guise of cultural exchange, making you go around their planet showing off their cultural advancements.
4. With time you get scraps of information on the situation in that space locale. It turns out to be that there's a war going on between races A,B,C and races D,E,F. Reasons for war are X, Y and Z. They aren't black and white, not clear cut. It also could be a disinformation by your host.
5. You get the feeling that your guys aren't really on the "right" side of the conflict and you start planning a long and hard escape. Your host don't suspect you yet.
6. Soon, a massive biological attack on your captors home planet happens, during which you and part of your crew manage to escape to an orbital station that's badly damaged and completely wiped out of race "A". You are unaffected, 'cause your biological composition is impervious to that biological weaponry. The attackers leave as suddenly as they appear, not noticing you.
7. You start to rebuild and help to revive race "A", since without their help you'd be a dead meat in a can floating about the unknown space... You find a few race "A" survivors on their home planet (some bright minds hid in a super secret nuclear blast bunker that you found after the bio-attack aftermath... w/e) and re-engineer their DNA with yours to preserve their race. They cooperate and with their help you resurrect the orbital station and build a one of a kind, cutting edge tech space ship to get back home. All you need to do is find that wormhole through which you traveled here. You are not interested in the local conflict. You just want to go home. Meanwhile a very strong bond between humans and race "A" was developed.
8. You go out in an approximate direction of where you came from..... Stuff happens - you meet another race. And another. You can't find the wormhole. Blah blah blah. Some more stuff happens. You're looking for somebody who knows how to get you back home. Conflict plot thickens. Even more stuff happens. You get sucked in the conflict......
9. You find out that you can't get back home the way you came here, but you can through some old nonfunctional Star Gate/Relay/w/e found on the other end of your galaxy sector. All you need to do is make it function.
Hunam, you're a genius. This kind of idea about Race A takes us in, helps us get settled, spins a sad story about how "Race D is evil and awful and they euthanize PUPPIES, FFS!" telling you all this disinformation. Yet, through your journeys across the galaxy you discover not EVERYTHING might be so terrible about Race D after all and everything you THOUGHT you knew gets turned on its head...
The plot thickens, the mystery deepens. I mean, this is perfectly in line with Star Control II!!!!!
When you first met the Druuge - did you immediately know/feel they were evil? It wasn't until I bought one of their UTTERLY USELESS "artifacts" and got slapped down by my starbase for selling crew that I thought, "Wait a second... these guys aren't the courteous sharers-of-technology they first appeared to be!"
But it goes deeper than that:
Are the Orz really all that "good"? They never say it, but the more you find out about them, and especially if you KEEP pressing them about the Androsynth, the ruse falls away and they proceed to turn on you immediately! Just for asking a question about why all the Androsynth cities are empty!
The Dnyarri plays to your sensibilities, trying to convince you he's a cuddly little guy, so he can get out and immediately make you his slave!
The Mycon can't even really be blamed for their colonization - it practically mirrors what we do on earth here. Should they really be destroyed for just wanting to spread their kind to the stars? Don't we all want that?
The Shofixti are even evil - at least in that first moment! They call you names and then try to kill you! Then later turn out to be your most stalwart supporters!
This kind of neither-here-nor-there circumstantial morality would be perfect for StarControl.
Good call, Hunam. You deserve extra credit.
Check this out guys.
Considering the main writer Chris Bucholz, the new Star Control could start something like this:
"After 240 years traveling toward Tau Prius and a new planet to colonize, the inhabitants of the generation ship Argos are bored and aimless. They join groups such as the Markers and the Breeders, have costumed orgies, and test the limits of drugs, alcohol, and pain just to pass the time..."
Heh, I know it's going to be earlier era, and recently binge watching a lot of Star Trek: Enterprise probably influences me, but I'd start at somewhere around 2114 or so. Humans have, perhaps with some Chenjesu advice, built their first starship and send it to explore the areas directly away from the Ur-Quan to seek Precursor artifacts, new allies and possibly new ares to colonise away from the Ur-Quan if the war fails. So the star map would be on the "other side", more toward the rim like in Project 6014. Perhaps even so much that it shares no stars with SC2 star map, considering how Pkunk are right there in the corner of the canonical map. Instead of Earth there might be an Earthling advance base. Chenjesu should have a cameo or at least be mentioned at this scenario.
Falling into some wormhole or the generation ship story is a fine way to bring the story in some completely new area where you don't run into the old aliens. Former reminds me a bit too much of the infamous Warp Bubble Transport, though. The generation ship could be something new.
Ah yes, "Reapers". They are basically the Eternal Ones from the game that must not be named.
I'd go with 2112 for the Rush reference:-)
I know it's academic, but I like dreaming up these things:
Ripping off Farscape: Humans, trying to replicate the Androsynth hyperdrive, build a big exploration ship. Instead of portal to hyperspace, this drive creates a wormhole that hurls the ship in a different part of the universe. The crew tries to use the drive again, but it just moves them to yet another random position and in a middle of battle. Some scavenger fringe of the local bad guys are attacking a starbase. They think that the Earthling ship is reinforcement to the defenders and attack it. The base and Earthlings manage to fight the attackers off.
The thankful starbase crew fix the hyperdrive or Earthling ship and offer to become the base of operations for them. Being an independent starbase on a region that has turned hostile, that's their best option anyways. The Humans' initial motivation is to figure out how to get home, but it soon becomes clear that they have bigger problems in the region.
Meanwhile on Earth no futher process in FTL technology is made until the Chenjesu arrive and the events of SC 1 and 2 happen. From their perspective the exploration ship was simply lost and never heard from again. Maybe in a happy ending the explorers might discover the way back home, but there should be some time dilation involved and they should arrive after the events of SC2. Probably better to leave that sort of ending a bit mysterious. The Earthling ship simply dissapearing to wormhole that presumably takes them back to Earth.
As harsh as it may sound: I don't care about any of your "story start" ideas.....
As long as the music makes it as EPIC as it was in the original!
dum dumdumdum, dum dum dumdumdum
...."an amazing discovery was made"
TA TA TAAAAAA
Writing it down like this makes it slightly less epic, granted, but if SC2 players don't get shivers just thinking of it then......they have different standards than me =P
I can't really expect that Stardock will do it in the way that I'm imagining, but I think it would be cool to see the game start off with the idea that humans are still very new to space travel; we are just getting our feet wet discovering other planets when we are suddenly swept up into the landscape of a much vaster story, and much more quickly than we had ever planned on.
So many other science fiction games see the people of Earth having already journeyed to the stars, fairly comfortable with the practice of interstellar exploration. We'd all like for Star Control to maintain a sense of adventure and I think to do that effectively, it has to feel like it could take place in a future not all that distant or different from today, and with people who don't seem like they're from a completely different far-flung future, people who are testing unfamiliar technology to push the limits of exploration.
To use the Star Trek reboot from 2009 (far from a perfect film) as an example, Kirk is thrust into a situation in a very similar fashion to how you become the main character of SC2; you're inexperienced and in over your head, but you take control of the situation and eventually save the day. Part of what makes this kind of an adventure story so compelling is that you're ostensibly a fairly ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances. Guess you could say the same thing about A New Hope and The Force Awakens too.
It's compelling when a protagonist is pushed into a trial by fire before they feel genuinely ready or comfortable to take on a challenge. It makes the drama more genuine and the reward of victory feel more earned.
I can't speak with conviction as to how you would work this effectively into the beginning of the narrative for Star Control, but I think it's a quick and effective method for getting players to sympathize with the situation by making it feel more familiar to them, as opposed to high-concept science fiction.
Please, whatever you do, don't hand command of a starship over to a 20-year-old who hasn't even graduated the academy yet. We wouldn't want Star Control to make as little sense as the Star Trek reboot:-)
No that would not do! But certainly it should be fine if it is a 20 year old something stumbling upon an alien spaceship and forming a bond with the AI or controls of the alien spaceship. Like in those soooo many numerous movies and animes...... maybe could be just a tiny winy little bit cliched 
.
"The Explorers" come to mind... (although they didn't find a ship it was the dream connection that allowed them to travel in space.
"Flight of the Navigator" also a nice movie....
No that would not do! But certainly it should be fine if it is a 20 year old something stumbling upon an alien spaceship and forming a bond with the AI or controls of the alien spaceship. Like in those soooo many numerous movies and animes...... maybe could be just a tiny winy little bit cliched .
"The Explorers" come to mind... (although they didn't find a ship it was the dream connection that allowed them to travel in space.
"Flight of the Navigator" also a nice movie....
Personally, I am tired of seeing 20 year old generals and senators in movies. It's ridiculous, make the hero be in his 40's, a 20 year old hero is not believable.
Shepard was 29 when he came into big boys world. Still, I felt like he was older. In his mid-late 30's.
Or you can choose the age? (i dont even know if we can see our character)
- Shade A.I
I'd rather not see him, but hear Mark Meer's voice (or Tricia Helfer if it's a she).
You raise an incredibly important point that I didn't know I wanted more details on! Will the Captain be voiced? Can we customize our Captain? CAN WE GIVE OUR CAPTAIN A RIDICULOUS MOUSTACHE AND A TOP HAT? Inquiring minds want to know!
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
Stardock Forums