12-08-2011, 09:41 PM
I have signed on with the "free" option in Beyond the Stellar Empire, as seen at this web site:
http://www.kjcgames.com/phoenix/nexus/index.php
You can play indefinitely if all you ever run are ships and ground parties. As soon as you want to run a starbase or a "political" position, you need to subscribe with the moderators for a regular charge. But I am approaching this as a complete novice, so that's what I'll be writing about here.
BSE is an open-ended science fiction space-opera type game, with computer and human moderation. I have absolutely no experience with this genre, so I will be learning (and documenting) as I go.
My first impression is that KJC is very professional, and knows how to put up a good web site. There is abundant online documentation, and you can basically run your turns right out of the browser. There is also an active discussion forum, which I will look forward to joining at some point.
Upon setting up a new login, you can set up a starting position as a starship captain in a neutral (but centrally-located) part of space. You go through a series of questions on what race you want to be, which of 3 starter ship hulls you want, a name for your commanding officer, etc. I went for a human crew with a surveyor ship -- not the fastest, but has some serviceable cargo space. All of this was pretty straightforward.
Then there came a suggestion to begin the "starter mission". I am not too clear on how "missions" work. Apparently I was invited to take part in a survey mission of a nearby planet. To begin, I needed to get to the planet where the "customer" was. I wasn't sure which planet *I* was on yet. But at the bottom of the mission page there was a link that sent me to the "Orders" page, where I can "submit" my orders that the "mission" already prefilled for me to get me to the target.
I did that, but still saw in "Incomplete" flag on the status of that particular mission. I now believe that's because while I had submitted the orders, they hadn't been processed yet. The next day, I apparently arrived at my destination, and was presented with a series of options on executing the survey mission.
Do I want to land? Do I want to contact the locals or go in quiet? Do I want to ignore illegal salvagers or engage them? Simple mission options, and they seemed to follow a pre-planned model. By the end of that day, apparently I bounced those salvagers, took some jewelry as booty, took some casualties, and sent them fleeing. I don't know what kind of jewelry or how much, nor do I know how badly my crew was hurt. But apparently my survey work on the surface is complete and I am now en route back to my customer with their data in hand. I am supposed to be rewarded with an upgrade to my ship's sensor array. We shall see.
All of this is entertaining, if a little confusing. What REALLY has me going are these little glimpses to the larger universe I am getting.
First, I can see space-scan reports wherever my ship travels, and take note of interstellar commerce, which is quite abundant. Each ship name is prefixed by their affiliation code -- one of the large player-run teams that control some aspect of the game and that set the context for in-game role-playing.
Second, I see that every aspect of my ship and crew is being tracked in meticulous detail -- what my maintenance status is, crew skill levels, space combat profiles and stats, very fine-grained and deep. This is what computers are good at, and why I think many PBM games have failed to exploit the vast computational and tracking powers available to all of us today.
Third, I found that EVERY PLANET in this game has a visual ground map. With thousands of planets -- that is a LOT of data! Once I get my feet wet, I am going to savor the idea of snooping around all over known space to find what fate throws me among such rich detail!
Now about those affiliations. Everyone starts out in the "Trainee" group, which is somewhat protected from combat and exploitation for a while. I did get in-game emails from 3 different affiliations. Apparently people take notice when new players sign up. I looked through the affiliate descriptions and submitted a request to join one of them. I clicked the wrong one, however, and got a reply from a fourth affiliation gently suggesting that I finish going through the "training" missions before joining anyone.
So that's what I'm doing now. I will go through every "startup" mission I can and see how far that takes me. I'll see if I can learn what other types of actions I can take. I will read through the extensive documentation. And I may dip into the player forum.
All in all, a promising start, if somewhat confusing.
http://www.kjcgames.com/phoenix/nexus/index.php
You can play indefinitely if all you ever run are ships and ground parties. As soon as you want to run a starbase or a "political" position, you need to subscribe with the moderators for a regular charge. But I am approaching this as a complete novice, so that's what I'll be writing about here.
BSE is an open-ended science fiction space-opera type game, with computer and human moderation. I have absolutely no experience with this genre, so I will be learning (and documenting) as I go.
My first impression is that KJC is very professional, and knows how to put up a good web site. There is abundant online documentation, and you can basically run your turns right out of the browser. There is also an active discussion forum, which I will look forward to joining at some point.
Upon setting up a new login, you can set up a starting position as a starship captain in a neutral (but centrally-located) part of space. You go through a series of questions on what race you want to be, which of 3 starter ship hulls you want, a name for your commanding officer, etc. I went for a human crew with a surveyor ship -- not the fastest, but has some serviceable cargo space. All of this was pretty straightforward.
Then there came a suggestion to begin the "starter mission". I am not too clear on how "missions" work. Apparently I was invited to take part in a survey mission of a nearby planet. To begin, I needed to get to the planet where the "customer" was. I wasn't sure which planet *I* was on yet. But at the bottom of the mission page there was a link that sent me to the "Orders" page, where I can "submit" my orders that the "mission" already prefilled for me to get me to the target.
I did that, but still saw in "Incomplete" flag on the status of that particular mission. I now believe that's because while I had submitted the orders, they hadn't been processed yet. The next day, I apparently arrived at my destination, and was presented with a series of options on executing the survey mission.
Do I want to land? Do I want to contact the locals or go in quiet? Do I want to ignore illegal salvagers or engage them? Simple mission options, and they seemed to follow a pre-planned model. By the end of that day, apparently I bounced those salvagers, took some jewelry as booty, took some casualties, and sent them fleeing. I don't know what kind of jewelry or how much, nor do I know how badly my crew was hurt. But apparently my survey work on the surface is complete and I am now en route back to my customer with their data in hand. I am supposed to be rewarded with an upgrade to my ship's sensor array. We shall see.
All of this is entertaining, if a little confusing. What REALLY has me going are these little glimpses to the larger universe I am getting.
First, I can see space-scan reports wherever my ship travels, and take note of interstellar commerce, which is quite abundant. Each ship name is prefixed by their affiliation code -- one of the large player-run teams that control some aspect of the game and that set the context for in-game role-playing.
Second, I see that every aspect of my ship and crew is being tracked in meticulous detail -- what my maintenance status is, crew skill levels, space combat profiles and stats, very fine-grained and deep. This is what computers are good at, and why I think many PBM games have failed to exploit the vast computational and tracking powers available to all of us today.
Third, I found that EVERY PLANET in this game has a visual ground map. With thousands of planets -- that is a LOT of data! Once I get my feet wet, I am going to savor the idea of snooping around all over known space to find what fate throws me among such rich detail!
Now about those affiliations. Everyone starts out in the "Trainee" group, which is somewhat protected from combat and exploitation for a while. I did get in-game emails from 3 different affiliations. Apparently people take notice when new players sign up. I looked through the affiliate descriptions and submitted a request to join one of them. I clicked the wrong one, however, and got a reply from a fourth affiliation gently suggesting that I finish going through the "training" missions before joining anyone.
So that's what I'm doing now. I will go through every "startup" mission I can and see how far that takes me. I'll see if I can learn what other types of actions I can take. I will read through the extensive documentation. And I may dip into the player forum.
All in all, a promising start, if somewhat confusing.