Project Anabasis Development Diary #3 - The Vision of it All

[MattAtlas]

Project Anabasis Development Diary #3

The Vision of it All

Hello! Welcome to what is probably the most awaited development diary, even though you probably didn’t expect it. In this diary, I will be walking you through the gameplay loop we have designed for NBT2, and the exact reasons why we made these particular decisions. A lot of these decisions are based on a lot of historical context relative to Aurora and my experiences on other servers. As such, I’ll try to fill everyone in on the most crucial details needed to understand the big picture. If there are any questions, as always, you can reach me on the Discord.

Without further ado, let’s get started – and find out what exactly you’ll be doing on the Blood Diamond!

Why does the gameplay need to change?

Whenever you’re doing something, you should always ask yourself: why? Similarly, when it comes to upheaving the entire gameplay loop of a server, first we need to realize why we made a choice so big that we have to rework not only the entire gameplay loop, but also change the in-game universe this much. I spoke about this in the very first development diary as well, but the core problem is that antagonists as the server’s gameplay loop are not sustainable.

What I mean by sustainable isn’t that they aren’t fun. Everyone, or most of everyone, loves those high-octane mercenary or tower defense rounds. I do, too. They’re part of what drove me to stick with Aurora, after all – more precisely, in my case it was a Paranoia round that made me decide to build my home here, for those that remember that gamemode. What I mean by sustainability here is that the server’s functioning and population essentially depend on a very, very small and limited pool of antagonists. This pool doesn’t replenish or expand anymore because the server has progressed to a point where the main driving force of what leads you to play the server is long-term character interactions. Logically, you cannot have long-term character development if you are playing an antagonist; you play something that only has an effect in that single round, and then disappears magically. This is without mentioning the numerous contrivances that are a barrier to people picking up antagonist regularly, such as the mass of contrived rules that HRP is, and the general lack of updates that antagonists see. Non-traitor/merc gamemodes are in a fairly sorry state, unfortunately, and this reflects the lack of both developer and player interest in updating those gamemodes.

Since the main gameplay loop supports itself essentially on a handful of people, what happens when those people all of a sudden stop playing antagonist? If one, two, or three of them leave, the whole house of cards comes falling down. Because our core department gameplay loops have never been updated and have only been gutted in the past decade, once the sole force that drives a round disappears, nobody wants to join a round anymore because there’s nothing to do. This is the root cause of our regular population droughts. When people have to be absent for a longer time than usual (usually because of exams or the like), this leads to our antagonist pool becoming so small that you can barely even roll autotraitor. Since you can’t roll any interesting gamemodes, people leave, and that’s how we end up in situations similar to the last half-year where nobody was playing the server. It is not a coincidence that population came back only once we started hosting regular events.

This means three things:

1. Antagonists cannot be the main source of gameplay.
2. Any gameplay we add must feed into that wish for long-term character interactions.
3. The core gameplay loops have to be made robust and interesting enough to not rely on the presence of a third party.

Sounds simple, right?

Well, no.

Why is the setting relevant to gameplay?

The core of this idea is that the gameplay is decided by the setting. Your setting gives you a handful of set pieces in which you can carve out the gameplay of whatever game you’re making. As an example, the Horizon is just one set piece in our setting. Another set piece could be a Zavodskoi installation. Yet another set piece could be a pirate ship in the Weeping Stars. In short, it’s just where the game takes place, but that is a crucial decision, because it also decides what you can add to your game.

A dedicated science department on a pirate ship wouldn’t be sustainable, for example, because it just breaks believability. Pirate scientists aren’t really something that’s sustainable in the current setting, at least not without major OOC contrivances. Similarly, the whole of the setting also limits you; a setting where there is mostly no major technological advance because we’re already in a post-scarcity era means that you have very little room to create something like a science department in, or even to justify the usage of low technology tools, just because everything is so available everywhere. Lastly, the political climate of the setting you’ve built also reflects itself on your game. If everything is at peace all the time, it becomes less and less sustainable to have conflict happen. You are limited to the same enemies pretty much the entire time; non-descript pirates, or whatever organisation the administrators and lore writers come up for the new event arc. The lack of risk in the galaxy as a whole means that you are limited in your choice for what events can take place in your game.

That is exactly the relevance of the setting to the gameplay. Our setting is made in mind with what was essentially a more advanced office simulator game; that’s basically what the NSS Aurora was. Later on, we moved to the Horizon but kept the same static setting meant for a static game. It’s just not made for the dynamic sort of experiences that a mobile ship should be going about. It’s also not made for exploration as a whole, because the Spur really does not have any mystery to it barring one or two elements, such as the Konyang vaults or the Lemurian Sea. 

In short, if we want the gameplay to become more interesting, we also need the setting to change. Staying in the current setting limits our breadth of possible experiences too much, and that’s how the Second Interstellar War and Anabasis came to be. For the sort of gameplay we envisioned, we needed a setting where the actors could truly be free of most constraints. We wanted a setting that allowed and even encourage the usage of low technology. We wanted a setting where there was a lot to explore; from post-war empires to ruins of a massive war, where you could unearth forgotten designs and put them to use for yourself. We wanted a setting where you could feasibly meet and fight any political group if you so wished to further your own agenda, and a setting where you could always feel the danger of your choices.

And how did we accomplish that, you ask?

Gameplay in Anabasis

Gameplay in Anabasis is centered around exploration at the core. This means that the entire ship structure, from its construction to its job titles and expectations, are going to be made with the idea that (mostly) everyone will be going down to expeditions. We are intentionally choosing to focus on planetary gameplay because it allows us to keep the gameplay consistently fresh by changing the atmosphere and scenario constantly. One of the important parts of this is that it allows us to inject PvE elements without very complex code contrivances. 

Indeed, we are planning mostly a shift towards a lot more PvE content than we currently have. As we discussed before, antagonists (intended as players playing something that is antagonistic or otherwise kind of “the jester” for the crew at large) are never really going to be sustainable, so we need to look towards PvE to have a truly sustainable gameplay loop. In this case, the core of Anabasis will be fulfilling Contracts as we’ve discussed before. But what actually is a contract?

Contracts

We spoke about this before – it’s the gamemode that is meant to supplant Secret as the new flagship gamemode of the server. In short, at roundstart there will be a setup period wherein the Captain (aided by Command), or lacking either of them the crew as a whole, will decide what the contract they will be fulfilling that day will be.

A contract is a fairly simple thing. A certain interstellar faction in the region has something they need done by third parties. In the universe of Anabasis, there are many reasons for this:

1. Interstellar nations no longer have the strength or will to carry out continued hostile actions. Borders are still contested and the entire Spur is in basically a cold war, but the road to recovery is long. On the other hand, mercenaries and freelancers are in their golden age, and none will turn down easy money.
2. Interstellar corporations have lost most of their private fleets and armaments, and are now forced to contract 3rd parties if they want anything done. But don’t kid yourself: one thing corporations haven’t lost is their greed and their backstabbing prowess. They will do anything to gain an advantage for themselves, even if it’s destroying a competitor’s headquarters in the region.
3. Local parties will often also be willing to offer money for certain tasks, whether those be resupplying a beleaguered city with food and drinks, fulfilling a shipment order, escorting a ship throughout the region, setting up a reception for an important guest, and so on.

In short, a contract can be anything. What contracts are available depends on a few things:

1. Your relations to interstellar factions. The more contracts you complete for a certain faction, the more your standing will increase with them, and the more you might offend other factions that are in competition with them. Pick who you want to get in bed with carefully.
2. The region’s threat level. Some regions are highly dangerous, and as such you’ll not often find very calm contracts there. In these places, it’s kill or be killed, and your survival will be the order of the day. Worry not, though, for it will be very profitable for your coffers.
3. Your threat level. Kill too many people, destroy too many things, and there will be droves of mercenaries willing to cut you down for a price.

A contract has its own difficulty and evilness (name pending) ratings. The contract’s difficulty is simple; how difficult will this contract be to complete? Generally, this will be synonymous with “danger”, and the higher difficulty a contract is, the more reward you will receive. Low-difficulty contracts will generally be civilian-level missions, such as completing shipments, resupplying towns and settlements, and so on; things that will be in the ballpark of service, logistics or engineering crew, generally. A high-difficulty contract will certainly require the crew to prepare properly. An extreme-difficulty contract will require the utmost care, skill and preparations, lest several die. A regional-difficulty contract will… well, no spoilers there! On the other hand, evilness determines just how much you’ll make everyone angry in this sector by completing this contract. The higher the evilness, the more threat level you will gain on completion, and the more threat level you have, the more people will want you down.

High difficulty contracts will replace current mercenary/tower defense/etc rounds. It’s where the whole crew will be expected to go down to a planet and put their skills to the test. Generally, this will be done by expecting them to go through a regionally-flavoured dungeon, completing various tasks (and probably getting rid of quite a lot of bad actors) to make it to the end and complete their contract. At roundstart, some spots in these dungeons will be filled by players (actors) to take particular spots if they so wish; but this is not necessary for the gamemode itself to function. More on these dungeons will be written in a future development diary, but consider them a hallmark feature of the Contracts gamemode.

As your threat level goes up, third parties will be less and less eager to work with you. If your name gets spread for the wrong reasons, third party ships will spawn in with flavour text telling them how to behave depending on your threat level. Even in Anabasis, nobody wants to work with bloody backstabbing killers. And the higher threat level, the more hostile ships to you will spawn. At the maximum threat level, a contract to take you down will be issued, and your position will be broadcasted to every hostile ship in the region. You’ll have to survive to clear your name. Good luck!

Once a contract is done, the employer will pay you, and the relations of your ship will update. Simple, right? The beauty of cashless payments. At the end of the month (every month on the 1st) the Tithe will be taken from the ship. If you don’t have enough money… some things may have to be forcefully requisitioned.

Departments

Finally what everyone was waiting for. Such a big shift in gameplay necessarily requires a shift in the departments: our conception thereof, and also of the expectations of their jobs.

Before that, though, I want to talk a bit about the conception of a department in Anabasis.

Sorry for the poor graphic, I’m not much of an art guy myself. Either way, the image is fairly self-explainatory. The important thing to keep in mind is that we want to strongly, strongly require inter-departmental cooperation. The Blood Diamond is going to be a machine that can only function at full strength if every department cooperates and fulfills their exploration duties. As you can see, key upgrades for departments will only come from resources/objects recovered from expedition, which then have to be analyzed or processed by the Fabrication department. We also want to have direct upgrade paths for each department with limited persistence (things will break and they have to be replaced, stored resources have a time limit).Supply and provision arrows signify what sort of relationship a department has to another.

Without further ado, welcome to the provisional department list for Anabasis!

Jobs with an asterisk have their name pending a change as the current name is not entirely fitting. Obviously, everything here is open for feedback, BUT PLEASE DO NOT GET OBSESSED OVER TINY DETAILS. Job numbers and job names are easy to change and will probably change over development time. What I don’t want to happen is a useless pages-long discussion over whether the Commanding Officer should be renamed to Captain or not. Similarly, if a slot number is different, IT IS NOT A BIG DEAL AND CAN BE ADDRESSED. I probably just mistyped a number if that is the case. And if a job is missing, do not panic, I have limited space for the infographic and needed to put down the most important things first.

Command

Command is generally not changing much in terms of the leaders of each department, other than them being handed more executional powers in the round. Keep in mind that regarding law and order of the ship, it’ll be far less corporate and more practical, so similarly there will be less paperwork and other ball-and-chain around Command’s choices. You’ll get to run your department how you want to.

At the top of the Command chain is the Commanding Officer, and this time they have more or less absolute power. Below them is their right hand, the Executive Officer, who – if you’re wondering – will in fact be a true second in command this time around, no questions asked. Immediately below them and equal to other department heads is the Expedition Leader, who is in charge of preparing the expedition and getting it done, basically Command’s eyes on the ground.

Armsmen

Well, that’s unexpected!

Security won’t just be doing security duties anymore. They’ll be the spearhead of any dangerous expedition into a dungeon or in hostile territory, which comes with the expectation that these mercs will use their hands and guns. For that reason, we chose to rename the department to Armsmen to better reflect their new duties.

Nothing is that different in this department other than that little © next to the Investigator name. That’s right – corporations will be coming back on the Anabasis as contractors! However, contractor jobs will be limited in amount and in how many contractors there can be per job. The supermajority of the Blood Diamond will always be freelancers, but you’ll be able to enjoy some good inter-branch tension. After all, those are corporates – those are the people that burnt the galaxy to ashes twenty years ago.

Investigator is one of such roles, however, investigators will only be able to be corporates. You’ll be the crime-solving and detective type, think a mix between Professor Layton and Ace Attorney… a crossover you could say.

About the armoury… more on that later.

Fabrication

That’s not Science!

No, it isn’t. Science fundamentally does not work in the setting and never has – there are too many lore and code problems to make it really work. It works even less in this setting too, so we’re replacing it with something that is more thematically fitting. 

Fabrication will be in charge of developing and supplying everyone with finished products and tools. The developing part will take place mainly in analyzing artifacts and lost technology from expeditions to repurpose them into blueprints that can be built with materials. Lost technology will be a strong theme in the Second Interstellar War - expect to find things such as old corporate datadisks with corporate DRM to crack, so on and so forth.

Technology researcher will be split 50/50 between corporates and freelancers. On the topic of some old corporate data you can find:

1. DRM.
   1. Think anything that can store information, and represents breaking their encryption. USB pens, hard-drives, virtual blueprints, holographic projectors that contain information on an away site and also information on how to fabricate something. Collect enough of them and you gain an usable blueprint.
   2. This will provide a random technology of low level.
2. Recreating blueprints.
   1. Incomplete blueprints can be found around away sites as a sort of “step-up” to DRM.
   2. Incomplete blueprints provide the idea of a schematic from the start, e.g. you find a “laser gun blueprint”, but they will need to be processed/experimented with manually with enough materials or through enough experiments.

Additionally, tools and equipment will be divided in tiers.

1. Tier 1
   1. The starting technology of every department. 
   2. Pretty shitty, it’s merc-ship standard.
   3. Visually it looks rusty, dusty, or used..
2. Tier 2
   1. Slightly better technology. If the ship has loads of money, it has a good chance of starting with some stuff as Tier 2.
   2. Alright equipment. Visually it’s slightly dusty, but looks a bit shinier.
   3. Every department should be able to get some Tier 2 equipment through inter-departmental cooperation at roundstart.
   4. Example: medical should be able to get Tier 2 medication through logistics orders OR through botany.
3. Tier 3
   1. Standard, retail equipment. A hand of God for a merc ship. It’s inner ring shit.
   2. Visually clean. Not too shiny.
   3. This equipment should ONLY be able to be manufactured by Logistics with expedition materials.
   4. There will be a way to quickly bring expedition materials to the ship.
   5. Phoron usage optional, but shouldn’t be much if any. Depends on the equipment itself.
4. Tier 4
   1. The good stuff. Experimental equipment.
   2. Very shiny. It needs to look like what you have in your hands is worth 500 000 dollars per round (sic.)
   3. This equipment can ONLY be made by Fabrication, and it should ONLY be at most one or two per round that they make. We want to keep it as something players fight for, and keep playing to find out what they can get.
   4. This is the equipment that generally uses phoron, and is thus a limited resource. As such, it should be powerful, but generally have downsides to its usage.

All of this is subject to change and is not final, as the department is currently in the theoretical stage. We’d love to know what you think!

The Surveyor will be the role that lets you fulfill the nerd scientist fantasy. It’s locked to corporates only and is the role in charge of documenting away sites and anomalies, which can be sold for a good price to collectors and… less scrupulous buyers.

Medical

For the changes that will take place in medical, see the medical rework. The largest change is the merger between surgeon and physician; this is due to the fact that the shift to expedition gameplay is not compatible with the conveyor loop gameplay we have. We need doctors that can treat more or less everything, or you risk people being unrecoverable because they got shot on an away site and a physician can’t fix their busted lung. Danger and damage will be a lot more present in Anabasis, so that’s not a situation we can afford.

Engineering

It’s engineering.

Regarding the changes that are planned for this department, Batra will have a nifty development diary up for you in due time. Regardless, I can say that we plan for upkeep and maintenance of machinery and equipment to be a major part of Anabasis. The ship’s state (cleanliness, functioning of machinery and etc) will be dependant on how much money the ship currently has, so if there’s little money expect to run around and have to fix quite a bit of stuff at roundstart.

Service

Service remains mostly as it is, though it’ll be a department full of corporates as the corporations still have a hold on the hospitality sector. We plan to involve service in low-intensity contracts as written above.

Logistics

Operations is being renamed to Logistics to better represent their job on the new ship. They’ll be in charge of making sure supplies get where they need to, that tools get to their users, and that the expedition is constantly supplied with whatever they need.

Expect constant supplies to be needed on expeditions, not just ammunition but also liveries for the crewmembers down there. There will be a big emphasis on needing food, water, rest, and other survival mechanics, so supply will become very important very quickly!

Additionally, they will be in charge of one of the armouries of the ship for the expedition. Generally, armouries will be split; we'll have a general armoury for the entire ship, an emergency armoury for lethal equipment, and a standard armoury for Security containing less-than-lethals, non-lethals and basic lethal and tactical equipment. More on this in a future development diary, or in a future pull request.

Conclusion

That’s all we have to show today. I hope that the shape of what we plan for Anabasis, and why we’ve planned for things to go as they have, is clear to everyone now. Everything in this development diary is still in the development stages and is more theoretical than not (barring the medical rework), so feedback is welcome.

All I ask is that you guys please do not focus on extremely tiny details. It really does not help me to see a discussion about whether a name should be X or Y. Those can always be fixed later, they are unimportant details; what matters the most is the idea of what we have, the concept of the gameplay, and other essential parts to developing a game.

Thank you for your attention, and I’ll see you in the next development diary!

[MattAtlas]

Some things I forgot to mention: interactions with away sites or third parties, and in general with Contracts, will all be fully canon. The exact extent of how the character permadeath rule works with this is yet to be established, though I can say for sure that we do not want people being forced to delete their character over one bad day or one unlucky shot.

[MattAtlas]

Updated the department graphic with the new contractors, somehow the new version hadn't saved.

[DatSamTho]

Will this completely supplant antagonist based gamemodes, or will they still be available as a side thing?

[Shimmer]

Yey new thing

 

 

20 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

And the higher threat level, the more hostile ships to you will spawn. At the maximum threat level, a contract to take you down will be issued, and your position will be broadcasted to every hostile ship in the region. You’ll have to survive to clear your name. Good luck!

These new hostile ships, will they be AI, or off-ship roles the players take? I don't remember whether this was mentioned in a previous development diary or not, but are contracts a thing that is available to off-ship spawns too and destroying the Horizon 2 simply becomes one of them?

Importantly; what happens if the Horizon 2 loses? As in gets shot to absolute non-functionality, or boarded and seized by a third party, etc, as a result of this bounty contract placed on it? Will there be a canon consequence for it, or will it be considered non-canon?

 

24 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

That’s right – corporations will be coming back on the Anabasis as contractors! However, contractor jobs will be limited in amount and in how many contractors there can be per job.

Yey : )

Just to clarify that I understand this correctly, is there a ship wide limit on how many corporate characters can be active as a whole? Per job? Or is the limit referring to only which jobs can be contractors?

Basically, if we assume that say, medical doctors can be corporate, is it that per round all 4 of them can be corporate, only 2 of them can be corporate, or that there can only be X amount of corporate contractors active period? Is the little (C) to show that those are the only roles that you can play as a corporate and freelancer, only as a corporate? And those who aren't marked are freelancer only?

 

[MattAtlas]

9 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

These new hostile ships, will they be AI, or off-ship roles the players take? I don't remember whether this was mentioned in a previous development diary or not, but are contracts a thing that is available to off-ship spawns too and destroying the Horizon 2 simply becomes one of them?

At the moment the contracts subsystem isn't made for contracts to be given to off-ship spawns, but it's something I thought of too while writing the development diary and might implement it. If I don't, they'll get a flavour message or something saying that they have to go after the Blood Diamond. This would only happen if the ship has reached maximum threat level, which would be really fucking hard.

10 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

Importantly; what happens if the Horizon 2 loses? As in gets shot to absolute non-functionality, or boarded and seized by a third party, etc, as a result of this bounty contract placed on it? Will there be a canon consequence for it, or will it be considered non-canon?

A lot of money will be gone and a lot of persistent stuff will disappear, which will be a Pretty Bad consequence. It'll be canon of course. The crew and so on will survive, but they'll lose most of their resources to pay off the bounty.

As for the hostile ships being AI, there will be player spawns for them, but the new ship combat system (more about that in a future dev diary) will support AI ships.

11 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

Just to clarify that I understand this correctly, is there a ship wide limit on how many corporate characters can be active as a whole? Per job? Or is the limit referring to only which jobs can be contractors?

The limit is per job.

11 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

Basically, if we assume that say, medical doctors can be corporate, is it that per round all 4 of them can be corporate, only 2 of them can be corporate, or that there can only be X amount of corporate contractors active period? Is the little (C) to show that those are the only roles that you can play as a corporate and freelancer, only as a corporate? And those who aren't marked are freelancer only?

There would be a limit, no more than half of a given role at most, though there can be some exceptions in some roles (most of service could feasibly be mostly if not all corporate, Fabrication would be half corporate half freelancer at most), etc. Unmarked roles are freelancer only, yes.

[Shimmer]

9 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

A lot of money will be gone and a lot of persistent stuff will disappear, which will be a Pretty Bad consequence. It'll be canon of course. The crew and so on will survive, but they'll lose most of their resources to pay off the bounty.

To expand on that, are there, or will there be, plans for the Horizon 2 to be able to 'lose the campaign'? If it is defeated enough times, or proves too unprofitable for its parent company, can it be completely destroyed or deemed 'no longer a profitable venture' and thus liquidated to necessitate a soft-rest? If so, how will that soft reset look like, how will it work for the characters involved?

 

11 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

There would be a limit, no more than half of a given role at most, though there can be some exceptions in some roles (most of service could feasibly be mostly if not all corporate, Fabrication would be half corporate half freelancer at most), etc. Unmarked roles are freelancer only, yes.

Gotcha. I assume which roles will allow corporates and how many aren't set in stone just yet? I'm a medical main so my focus naturally goes to it, and the corporation I like to play as the most is Zeng-Hu, it feels limiting that the only option in medical for that corporation appears to be pharmacist.

 

And tangentially but this reminded me of something I wanted to ask;

58 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

The Surveyor will be the role that lets you fulfill the nerd scientist fantasy. It’s locked to corporates only and is the role in charge of documenting away sites and anomalies, which can be sold for a good price to collectors and… less scrupulous buyers.

Currently archaeology is in a weird quasi-canon but not really canon state, I might be mistaken on this and correct me if I am but some of the more bizarre anomalies aren't allowed to be treated as something a character canonically found and the consequences of this anomaly likewise follow the same rule. Will this be changed, will those anomalies, and whatever quirks they have, become a canon element of the story? Will they play into fabrication as a whole where those very anomalies can be broken down and used for their technology to improve the gear the Horizon 2 has? Will they become a part of the story, so to speak?

 

Will the anomaly and discovery system be expanded upon in the rework? Will surveyors receive new gameplay content to play into contracts, such as surveying new planets, taking atmospheric readings, geological readings, soil and flora/fauna samples for a monetary reward?

[MattAtlas]

3 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

To expand on that, are there, or will there be, plans for the Horizon 2 to be able to 'lose the campaign'? If it is defeated enough times, or proves too unprofitable for its parent company, can it be completely destroyed or deemed 'no longer a profitable venture' and thus liquidated to necessitate a soft-rest? If so, how will that soft reset look like, how will it work for the characters involved?

No because that's just too much trouble for no real gain and I don't want that sort of risk.

3 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

Gotcha. I assume which roles will allow corporates and how many aren't set in stone just yet? I'm a medical main so my focus naturally goes to it, and the corporation I like to play as the most is Zeng-Hu, it feels limiting that the only option in medical for that corporation appears to be pharmacist.

Nothing like that is set in stone, no, what's important is the general idea at this stage of development really.

4 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

Currently archaeology is in a weird quasi-canon but not really canon state, I might be mistaken on this and correct me if I am but some of the more bizarre anomalies aren't allowed to be treated as something a character canonically found and the consequences of this anomaly likewise follow the same rule. Will this be changed, will those anomalies, and whatever quirks they have, become a canon element of the story?

Most definitely yes as the aim is to make every gameplay element canon basically.

4 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

Will they play into fabrication as a whole where those very anomalies can be broken down and used for their technology to improve the gear the Horizon 2 has? Will they become a part of the story, so to speak?

Most probably, yes.

4 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

Will the anomaly and discovery system be expanded upon in the rework?

Depends on the time we have.

5 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

Will surveyors receive new gameplay content to play into contracts, such as surveying new planets, taking atmospheric readings, geological readings, soil and flora/fauna samples for a monetary reward?

Half of this is is already in game so it'd be pretty easy to make this work, and that's mostly the current idea, yeah.

[meep109]

Is the third party customization system planned for change? I love playing third parties right now but there's almost no persistence just because of how the character setup is right now.

[Shimmer]

I do actually have one final question I forgot to ask twice, sorry about splitting this into three posts LMAO

 

1 hour ago, MattAtlas said:

Expect constant supplies to be needed on expeditions, not just ammunition but also liveries for the crewmembers down there. There will be a big emphasis on needing food, water, rest, and other survival mechanics, so supply will become very important very quickly!

Food and water are sort of self explanatory, but will they have more of an effect than they do now? Currently as far as I understand they simply affect how much stamina you have, will it now include other maluses such as skill penalties, slower movement, etc?

 

And as for resting, what will that entail mechanically? Codebases like that of Vanderlin have sleep making sense in that a round actually takes the course of an entire in game week rather than time being a 1:1. Will time be accelerated, will rest be flavored as simple fatigue or actual sleep?

 

Hope this doesn't count as diving into minutia, but I am curious about that.

 

[MattAtlas]

1 hour ago, Shimmer said:

Food and water are sort of self explanatory, but will they have more of an effect than they do now? Currently as far as I understand they simply affect how much stamina you have, will it now include other maluses such as skill penalties, slower movement, etc?

Yeah, mainly they'll be effects to force people to not go into expeditions without the appropriate supplies. For the effects of those you'll have to wait a future development diary as we're getting into elements that are still being discussed/theorized at the moment, and that need other systems to be in place first before they can really make sense.

1 hour ago, Shimmer said:

And as for resting, what will that entail mechanically? Codebases like that of Vanderlin have sleep making sense in that a round actually takes the course of an entire in game week rather than time being a 1:1. Will time be accelerated, will rest be flavored as simple fatigue or actual sleep?

It's rest intended as just taking a breather, so sitting down or lying down without combat for a while, eating and drinking, etc. Basically the kind of rest you would have after a lot of physical exertion.

[MattAtlas]

2 hours ago, meep109 said:

Is the third party customization system planned for change? I love playing third parties right now but there's almost no persistence just because of how the character setup is right now.

Has been on my to-do list for a long time. It'll come soon-ish.

[Roostercat]

I really like the new change to the gameplay loop and generally like the changes to the departments as well. I'm a bit iffy on the surgeon and phys merge but then again I've not played the new gamemode yet so I can't say its a bad idea without it being tried due to how unique the new situation is.

I ESPECIALLY like that Fabrication is now what science should have been. It gives them a reason to exist and makes it much clearer as to how they are actually useful. Science doesn't usually do any actual research, they just study things we happen to come across. Codifying it into fabrication is a net positive for the server and all science characters. Based.

 

I do have some concerns about the structure of command and how the corporate character limit works. 

3 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

 

Jobs with an asterisk have their name pending a change as the current name is not entirely fitting. Obviously, everything here is open for feedback, BUT PLEASE DO NOT GET OBSESSED OVER TINY DETAILS. Job numbers and job names are easy to change and will probably change over development time. What I don’t want to happen is a useless pages-long discussion over whether the Commanding Officer should be renamed to Captain or not. Similarly, if a slot number is different, IT IS NOT A BIG DEAL AND CAN BE ADDRESSED. I probably just mistyped a number if that is the case. And if a job is missing, do not panic, I have limited space for the infographic and needed to put down the most important things first.

Command

Command is generally not changing much in terms of the leaders of each department, other than them being handed more executional powers in the round. Keep in mind that regarding law and order of the ship, it’ll be far less corporate and more practical, so similarly there will be less paperwork and other ball-and-chain around Command’s choices. You’ll get to run your department how you want to.

At the top of the Command chain is the Commanding Officer, and this time they have more or less absolute power. Below them is their right hand, the Executive Officer, who – if you’re wondering – will in fact be a true second in command this time around, no questions asked. Immediately below them and equal to other department heads is the Expedition Leader, who is in charge of preparing the expedition and getting it done, basically Command’s eyes on the ground.

 

 

So, with this chart and the explanation of command, I do worry about the absolute power the CO is now going to have. Namely, if someone makes an extremely evil CO and tries to force a good character to do morally reprehensible things out of nowhere, will the good character then be forced to either do that thing or just be shitcanned for the round? It could end up placing a limit on characters in the sense that playing 'good' characters with boundaries will become very difficult because the mere concept clashes with any CO that happens to desire war crimes today and is willing to dumpster anyone that doesn't go along. Is there still going to be something akin to the captain-level decision to remove them that heads of staff now can do? 

It also leads to my next question, and I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before so my bad if it has, but is there going to be a CCIA equivalent? Is there going to be regulations for what the crew of the Diamond can and can't do? This is also in the interest of keeping sane rational characters from just being bullied every single round with no recourse by more insane characters. You can rely on the Head of Staff for the department to figure it out, sure, but what if that head of staff is also some tyrant? It could make certain departments completely unplayable by people not interested in the more balls to the wall social conflict depending on what characters are around.  I understand that one of the goals is to make criminal characters more justified, which is fine, but I do wonder if that means overt criminals are going to be walking around. 

3 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

 

Armsmen

Well, that’s unexpected!

Security won’t just be doing security duties anymore. They’ll be the spearhead of any dangerous expedition into a dungeon or in hostile territory, which comes with the expectation that these mercs will use their hands and guns. For that reason, we chose to rename the department to Armsmen to better reflect their new duties.

Nothing is that different in this department other than that little © next to the Investigator name. That’s right – corporations will be coming back on the Anabasis as contractors! However, contractor jobs will be limited in amount and in how many contractors there can be per job. The supermajority of the Blood Diamond will always be freelancers, but you’ll be able to enjoy some good inter-branch tension. After all, those are corporates – those are the people that burnt the galaxy to ashes twenty years ago.

 

This one also concerns me, because having not only a limit on what jobs can even be corporate, but limiting slots on a limited slot job based on corporate affiliation is going to mean that playing your corporate character consistently could end up being extremely difficult because there's now two roundstart rolls you have to win; the general roll for a slot and now rolling against other corporate characters that want to play too. I think it would be much better to just stick to limiting what jobs a corp character can be and not halving the slots for the round of that job based on corp/freelancer status. Especially because we have long rounds and a lot of people can only play, like, one a day. 

[MattAtlas]

4 minutes ago, Roostercat said:

Namely, if someone makes an extremely evil CO and tries to force a good character to do morally reprehensible things out of nowhere, will the good character then be forced to either do that thing or just be shitcanned for the round? It could end up placing a limit on characters in the sense that playing 'good' characters with boundaries will become very difficult because the mere concept clashes with any CO that happens to desire war crimes today and is willing to dumpster anyone that doesn't go along. Is there still going to be something akin to the captain-level decision to remove them that heads of staff now can do? 

We haven't really gotten to the point of drafting the new regulations and SOP so this isn't something I can answer with certainty at the moment, but in all likelihood yes, there will be some sort of mechanism to replace the CO. There kind of has to be one anyway in case they are somehow subverted or incapacitated and etc. As for being forced to do things, it's just a matter of fact that giving the Captain role more power means that they can make people do different things. Like I said in the other thread, the setting is more morally grey, so if you play an unequivocally good character then you'll be immersing them in dilemmas more often. But I think that makes playing them more fun, not the opposite; you have to work from within the system and be a good person regardless to change what you can, which is a more interesting angle IMO.

6 minutes ago, Roostercat said:

It also leads to my next question, and I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before so my bad if it has, but is there going to be a CCIA equivalent? Is there going to be regulations for what the crew of the Diamond can and can't do? This is also in the interest of keeping sane rational characters from just being bullied every single round with no recourse by more insane characters. You can rely on the Head of Staff for the department to figure it out, sure, but what if that head of staff is also some tyrant? It could make certain departments completely unplayable by people not interested in the more balls to the wall social conflict depending on what characters are around.  I understand that one of the goals is to make criminal characters more justified, which is fine, but I do wonder if that means overt criminals are going to be walking around. 

There are going to be discussions about the future of CCIA in the near future, so I'll hold off on commenting on that. As for regulations, yeah, those will exist of course. We don't want every round devolving into massive brawls or mutinies or whatever. I did say several times that things would be more lax when it comes to character conflict, but we're not looking for constant shitfests either, that would be a pain in the ass to moderate and it would ruin the atmosphere. Fully aware we need to strike a careful balance here, so we'll try our best.

8 minutes ago, Roostercat said:

This one also concerns me, because having not only a limit on what jobs can even be corporate, but limiting slots on a limited slot job based on corporate affiliation is going to mean that playing your corporate character consistently could end up being extremely difficult because there's now two roundstart rolls you have to win; the general roll for a slot and now rolling against other corporate characters that want to play too. I think it would be much better to just stick to limiting what jobs a corp character can be and not halving the slots for the round of that job based on corp/freelancer status. Especially because we have long rounds and a lot of people can only play, like, one a day. 

The problem is I can't feasibly limit the corporate jobs more than I already have, this is pretty much already the least amount of jobs that can be corporate and it's still quite a lot of them. The original version of the department chart had even less, and the feedback I got is that for proper representation we would need more roles to be corporate, also given the corporations we'll probably have. I think it'll just be a fact of the matter that you'll have to play a certain character less if they're a corporate unfortunately, it's the only way to properly represent the freelancer/corporate split in certain roles.

Some roles will likely have more of a split than others, in the sense that they'll have more %-corporate than %-freelancer, but more on that in a future development diary.

[Lordnesh]

Will Vaurca finally be able to hold command positions?

[Vivalas]

This seems rather interesting to me. I've always enjoyed the somewhat Star Trek nature of the corporate explorers or the expeditionary corps back on Bay but I think this is a very interesting setting. It reminds me pretty closely of Traveller which, not sure if it's an inspiration, but it strikes me as "very large roleplay group sets out on a Free Trader and hijinks ensue", and it's one of my favorite RPGs and settings.

 

I've always been a bit curious about the medical rework, as I've seen it mentioned a few times in the past. Is there a dedicated document to that somewhere? It's certainly something I've been interested in contributing to if I can find the time, whenever that time comes

[MattAtlas]

1 hour ago, Vivalas said:

This seems rather interesting to me. I've always enjoyed the somewhat Star Trek nature of the corporate explorers or the expeditionary corps back on Bay but I think this is a very interesting setting. It reminds me pretty closely of Traveller which, not sure if it's an inspiration, but it strikes me as "very large roleplay group sets out on a Free Trader and hijinks ensue", and it's one of my favorite RPGs and settings.

 

I've always been a bit curious about the medical rework, as I've seen it mentioned a few times in the past. Is there a dedicated document to that somewhere? It's certainly something I've been interested in contributing to if I can find the time, whenever that time comes

See https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/22307 and contact me on the Discord if you want further details.

[NG+7 Gael]

I agree with a lot of the stuff regarding the setting needing to change and sustainability of gameplay loops and whatnot; how well this particular idea will work, who knows, but I'm interested to see how things develop.

Still, I do have some questions & concerns regarding the information given:

1. Previously, we were told that the idea w/ the project does not involve the setting becoming more 'grimdark', and I'm aware of the repeated mentions of it being meant to be 'morally grey', however looking at the 'evilness' system, danger/threat levels, and the increased power for the Captain role, I can't help but feel that - while decision-making and such may be in the realm of 'morally grey' - it very much reads as though the setting itself is going to become more grimdark, particularly given the presence of Certain Types of Captains. I know the 'evilness' name is pending (and I hope it changes), but I do wanna ask again about the tone of the setting. The name of the ship being "Blood Diamond" honestly really doesn't help with this concern, either...

2. Service. There's very little info given above about the role that service will have in NBT2; the section for service simply states that the intent is to involve them in low-threat contracts, which I can only assume to be simply making and fulfilling orders similar to how current Operations bounties work. That being said, if they're only being involved in low-threat contracts - which seems to be the implication - I'm concerned that the low-threat contracts that they can partake in will be pretty boring, like current bounties, and/or not worthwhile completing, and thus the ship never gets directed towards these things, and service is mostly left out of the loop again. However reading through other information in this thread, I noted the part under 'Logistics' regarding liveries and food/water/etc ... are there plans to involve service in that part of logistics? Because based on what was said to Shimmer here:

8 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

Yeah, mainly they'll be effects to force people to not go into expeditions without the appropriate supplies.

... That certainly seems like it would be the case, and that it would be a good way to get Service involved with all levels of on-the-ground contracts.

3. There's no information regarding the Bridge Officer(s). Could we get some elaboration on their role? Is it more-or-less the same as current BC, or...?

4. If this isn't something that's wait-and-see for the dev diary...

12 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

The ship’s state (cleanliness, functioning of machinery and etc) will be dependant on how much money the ship currently has, so if there’s little money expect to run around and have to fix quite a bit of stuff at roundstart.

...is this implying that the amount of money the ship has is randomized, or that it's persistent?

[Lordnesh]

Oh. I remembered the idea had. "Antagonism" instead of evilness?

[Owen]

46 minutes ago, Lordnesh said:

Oh. I remembered the idea had. "Antagonism" instead of evilness?

Yeah. Antagonism, Notoriety, Infamy, Provocation, Opposition, etc... anything like that would make sense in my opinion

[Lordnesh]

Notoriety and infamy are good too.

[MattAtlas]

4 hours ago, NG+7 Gael said:

1. Previously, we were told that the idea w/ the project does not involve the setting becoming more 'grimdark', and I'm aware of the repeated mentions of it being meant to be 'morally grey', however looking at the 'evilness' system, danger/threat levels, and the increased power for the Captain role, I can't help but feel that - while decision-making and such may be in the realm of 'morally grey' - it very much reads as though the setting itself is going to become more grimdark, particularly given the presence of Certain Types of Captains. I know the 'evilness' name is pending (and I hope it changes), but I do wanna ask again about the tone of the setting. The name of the ship being "Blood Diamond" honestly really doesn't help with this concern, either...

Here it depends on what people's definition of "grimdark" is. In my opinion, it's a label that gets thrown around too much without the actual definition ever being clear. The way I consider grimdark personally is a world where nothing you do can really ever matter and it's just a constant fight for survival, nothing more. This is absolutely not the case in NBT2. The galaxy is worse as a whole, sure, but things don't suck everywhere. There are areas where life goes on as normal, such as in inner Sol, and there are areas where life is a lot worse than before as well. The sense of scale isn't grimdark, either; the ship can definitely affect a region for good or worse.

When I say the setting is more morally grey, I mean that you are not by default going to be the good guys. Sometimes you will have to do some bad things to get money because you're freelancers. And that's part of the conflict - it does not mean that what you do doesn't matter or that things always suck, or that there will never be a chance to do some good in the galaxy. 

As for the names, like I said, don't focus on them too much. Blood Diamond is just a development name. It's the first one that I came up with because I needed one to use in the first development diary and it is liable to change, same with evilness, it's just a variable to track infamy. Those names aren't really meant to reflect much. If you go back to the first dev diary, it says that none of the names are set in stone and they're just names we use to refer to things without saying "the new ship".

4 hours ago, NG+7 Gael said:

2. Service. There's very little info given above about the role that service will have in NBT2; the section for service simply states that the intent is to involve them in low-threat contracts, which I can only assume to be simply making and fulfilling orders similar to how current Operations bounties work. That being said, if they're only being involved in low-threat contracts - which seems to be the implication - I'm concerned that the low-threat contracts that they can partake in will be pretty boring, like current bounties, and/or not worthwhile completing, and thus the ship never gets directed towards these things, and service is mostly left out of the loop again. However reading through other information in this thread, I noted the part under 'Logistics' regarding liveries and food/water/etc ... are there plans to involve service in that part of logistics? Because based on what was said to Shimmer here:

Yes, service is planned to be involved in supplying the expedition with stuff like food, drinks, and so on, which like I said will become more relevant. As for involving them elsewhere, people have to realise that there's a logical limit to how much we can involve the department that is, in concept, a department fundamentally about not being involved. We will try our best, sure, but there is no world in any SS13 server where SS13 is going to be involved in the main gameplay loop to the same degree and as much as, say, Security or Engineering. It is just not feasible because the concept of the department isn't that. The bartender is never going to have the same involvement as a security officer because they're a bartender, it's a low stakes role that is meant to be low stakes.

Low intensity contracts will take the place of the current extended/traitor/ling/whatever rounds. Whether they'll be boring or not I'm not really sure at the moment. We'll see. Another planned piece of gameplay is forward operating bases and Service setting up there to help out Engineering and whoever else comes back or is working at the FOB with food, drinks, and so on.

4 hours ago, NG+7 Gael said:

3. There's no information regarding the Bridge Officer(s). Could we get some elaboration on their role? Is it more-or-less the same as current BC, or...?

This is because Bridge Officer is one of those roles that are still up in the air in terms of exact duties (and the name as well). At the moment I want to keep them similar to what they are now, but with more freedom to run around and snoop in other departments as the XO's dutiful assistants.

4 hours ago, NG+7 Gael said:

...is this implying that the amount of money the ship has is randomized, or that it's persistent?

Ship money is not randomized, it's persistent. The only times it gets reset are with the Tithe, and if it reaches maximum infamy and is cut down to size by other off-ships. However, you do use ship money to requisition gear and other equipment, or to pay off pirates or other people, so it's liable to go up or down depending on what people do.

1 hour ago, Owen said:

Yeah. Antagonism, Notoriety, Infamy, Provocation, Opposition, etc... anything like that would make sense in my opinion

Notoriety or infamy are pretty good.

[Roostercat]

Are there going to be space based contracts or is it going to be entirely ground-based? Stuff like take out X pirate ship, renovate X station etc.

[dessysalta]

As always, cool news and good stuff. Love to see where the server's going and I think this is going to be fucking awesome no matter what. That said, still wanted to raise some questions myself:

On 11/06/2026 at 09:42, MattAtlas said:

the gamemode that is meant to supplant Secret as the new flagship gamemode of the server

I'm curious if this means we'll effectively never see another Secret (or other antagonist-based) round ever again, or if they'll just be more uncommon, etc. Antagonists, while unsustainable, offer certain upsides you won't get from contracts- namely being all player-controlled and especially freeform compared to a niche theme we're likely to expect in certain sectors. Likewise, I'm curious if freeform stuff will be expected at all from contracts- for instance, will Storytellers be able to make custom contracts that function as pseudo-antagonist gimmicks? Antagonists primarily allow for underrepresented facets of the lore to show up once in awhile. Losing that would be rough.

On 11/06/2026 at 09:42, MattAtlas said:

Job numbers and job names are easy to change and will probably change over development time.

Not getting caught up in the little stuff like you said, I promise!! That said, for awhile I've been wondering if job numbers across the board (on the Horizon or not) would be increased, or policies put in place to allow more players in if they don't get their role- like OOCly allowing off-duty characters to get in on the fun even if their department is fully staffed. I know the current blurb on "don't disallow volunteers on expeditions" covers this by and large, but I wanted to know if it was going to change substantially in the coming years. 

On 11/06/2026 at 09:42, MattAtlas said:

That’s right – corporations will be coming back on the Anabasis as contractors! However, contractor jobs will be limited in amount and in how many contractors there can be per job. The supermajority of the Blood Diamond will always be freelancers, but you’ll be able to enjoy some good inter-branch tension.

How will corporate contractors, suck-ups, haters, etc. be represented? As it stands, the Horizon is all contractors, meaning there's an absolute slew of different groups that do contracting work in lore, and by extent for each character on-ship to be working under. If we were to mostly be united under the guise of a freelancer, does that mean none of us get to be outwardly affiliated with other corporations/groups aside from those who work for them in assigned contracting roles? The inter-branch tension is certainly going to be cool, but I'm concerned it's going to limit the mercenaries on-ship to being purely personal mercenary go-getters instead of, say, John Personality Cult's strongest warrior, a group of Ringspire nerds, whatever. Will corporate paraphernalia exist for mercenaries to take, wear, or display? What about symbology or uniforms of other groups?

Basically, I'm curious if we're only going to see security teams consisting of rag-tag mercenaries or if we'll occasionally get groups of 2-3+ people who work in security but dress like/openly display allegiance to one group or another.

Aside from that, I'm excited. Very excited. Keep it up, guys.

 

[MattAtlas]

2 hours ago, dessysalta said:

I'm curious if this means we'll effectively never see another Secret (or other antagonist-based) round ever again, or if they'll just be more uncommon, etc. Antagonists, while unsustainable, offer certain upsides you won't get from contracts- namely being all player-controlled and especially freeform compared to a niche theme we're likely to expect in certain sectors. Likewise, I'm curious if freeform stuff will be expected at all from contracts- for instance, will Storytellers be able to make custom contracts that function as pseudo-antagonist gimmicks? Antagonists primarily allow for underrepresented facets of the lore to show up once in awhile. Losing that would be rough.

Antagonists will be present in Contracts but in a canon fashion. Although most of Contracts is PvE based I do want to implement things like mercenary or raiders back as high-intensity contracts if there are enough people readied up with a certain pref. The traitor uplink will probably be grandfathered in as what Contracts antagonists use to gear up. Things like ling, vampire, and cult are probably going to be sunsetted as... well, nobody maintains them in the first plac,e and second of all they're not canon so unusable in the new gamemode. As for Secret itself, it will be eventually sunsetted as a gamemode yes, since the entirety of NBT2 relies on people playing the gamemode where they can get money.

Regarding Storytellers, the short answer is yes, the long answer about that is: find out in another dev diary!

2 hours ago, dessysalta said:

Not getting caught up in the little stuff like you said, I promise!! That said, for awhile I've been wondering if job numbers across the board (on the Horizon or not) would be increased, or policies put in place to allow more players in if they don't get their role- like OOCly allowing off-duty characters to get in on the fun even if their department is fully staffed. I know the current blurb on "don't disallow volunteers on expeditions" covers this by and large, but I wanted to know if it was going to change substantially in the coming years. 

No plans for either of these things at the moment, I think the status quo here is fine. It is not physically possible to put everyone under the spotlight in every round and neither should we do that.

2 hours ago, dessysalta said:

If we were to mostly be united under the guise of a freelancer, does that mean none of us get to be outwardly affiliated with other corporations/groups aside from those who work for them in assigned contracting roles?

The Freelancers themselves are all going to work for the group that the Blood Diamond is under, so Avarizia, but overall we are going to try and make it as interesting of a group as possible. I don't really know if we'll have other merc groups on the ship yet; current plan is no, but it's one of those things that I'm still mulling over.

2 hours ago, dessysalta said:

Will corporate paraphernalia exist for mercenaries to take, wear, or display? What about symbology or uniforms of other groups?

Neither of these things are going to be limited I don't think. Just know that corps in 24XX are not seen very well.

2 hours ago, dessysalta said:

Basically, I'm curious if we're only going to see security teams consisting of rag-tag mercenaries or if we'll occasionally get groups of 2-3+ people who work in security but dress like/openly display allegiance to one group or another.

Either way, your allegiance is going to be to Avarizia no matter what. You might have a bit more freedom in what you can wear but you still have to bring the money home for your employers.

15 hours ago, Roostercat said:

Are there going to be space based contracts or is it going to be entirely ground-based? Stuff like take out X pirate ship, renovate X station etc.

Yeah, absolutely. Part of the new ship combat rework that will happen this year or the next is to allow AI-controlled ships on the overmap for this reason.