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

[deisal32]

This all looks really really cool and is really exciting. I'm super late on this but I thought to weigh in.

I feel like I'm interpreting things wrong but do all jobs with the (c) mean that they are corporate contractor exclusive, or simply that contractors are allowed in those positions? Because as a service main I'll be really sad if I'm saddled as a corporate dog again.

And as a small suggestion I think Corpsman (or the full Hospital Corpsman) would work really well as a replacement for Field Doctor, since it's in reference to navy medical technicians and pairs well with the Armsman title.

[MattAtlas]

16 hours ago, deisal32 said:

I feel like I'm interpreting things wrong but do all jobs with the (c) mean that they are corporate contractor exclusive, or simply that contractors are allowed in those positions? Because as a service main I'll be really sad if I'm saddled as a corporate dog again.

Won't be forced corporate, the current thinking is that each (C) job will have a percentage split between corporate and freelancers.

16 hours ago, deisal32 said:

And as a small suggestion I think Corpsman (or the full Hospital Corpsman) would work really well as a replacement for Field Doctor, since it's in reference to navy medical technicians and pairs well with the Armsman title.

We'll think about it, the main issue is that I believe most people tie the word Corpsman to paramedics.

[SeniorScore]

On 21/06/2026 at 11:31, MattAtlas said:

Won't be forced corporate, the current thinking is that each (C) job will have a percentage split between corporate and freelancers.

I think it should just be corporates are allowed into this position, not trying to juggle percentages to further restrict a slot.

[MattAtlas]

7 hours ago, SeniorScore said:

I think it should just be corporates are allowed into this position, not trying to juggle percentages to further restrict a slot.

This makes sense in theory, the problem is that I don't want the ship to ever be in a situation where corporates aren't the minority (<40%).

[SeniorScore]

3 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

This makes sense in theory, the problem is that I don't want the ship to ever be in a situation where corporates aren't the minority (<40%).

if every single corporate job was filled with contractors, it should only come to 36% of total available jobs. if you mean in any given round, in most given population spreads, idk.
Current pop reflects that security is the most fought for role and none of those are corporate. I really don't feel this is an issue worth worrying about until it becomes a problem.

[OstianFox]

I have some issues with the current situation of jobs. And this is all going to be from a purely Research mindset. And yes, I just returned after a hiatus but this is coming from seeing NBT1 and how the Exodus Operated 

Cutting down Research to basically robotics and what I assume is R&D Fabrication is in my opinion, gutting the department even more and causing less of a chance for interesting things to come up. For example I play a Xenobio Main RD and having my entire character story and lore of the past how many years he has been around being gutted because we are stripping Research is heartbreaking. 

Recently I have been trying to do niche science things to get people more interested in running it, but again hearing it's all going to be pointless is frustrating. 

On top of that, what do I do for my RD who I have enjoyed playing for years? Yes we will have a timeskip and I can make it work, maybe elevate him higher after the war, but thats a topic for another day.

Ever since I returned and honestly before it, I have noticed science has been a shell of what it was long ago. But is there anything that is going to be said about the niche disciplines like Xenobio/Xenobot/Telescience?

Overall I love the direction of NBT2, I just want more clarity on what science is becoming, why, and is there any leeway to have more specialized "fabrication" teams.

[MattAtlas]

21 hours ago, SeniorScore said:

If every single corporate job was filled with contractors, it should only come to 36% of total available jobs. if you mean in any given round, in most given population spreads, idk.
Current pop reflects that security is the most fought for role and none of those are corporate. I really don't feel this is an issue worth worrying about until it becomes a problem.

I don't agree with the mantra of "don't worry about things until they become problems" generally speaking but it's a good point that if every available contractor job is filled with corporates, then there probably wouldn't be enough to become a majority anyway. I'll keep it in mind and see if we can do away with the percentage divide between freelancers and corpos since reception on that hasn't been too good anyway.

15 hours ago, OstianFox said:

Cutting down Research to basically robotics and what I assume is R&D Fabrication is in my opinion, gutting the department even more and causing less of a chance for interesting things to come up. For example I play a Xenobio Main RD and having my entire character story and lore of the past how many years he has been around being gutted because we are stripping Research is heartbreaking. 

I don't understand from what perspective you could say "gutted" when the entire department is being remade ground-up. What's on this development diary is just the basic skeleton of what we want to do with R&D, which we haven't even expanded upon because we haven't gotten to actually implementing said rework. If you're talking about removing jobs like xenobiology, we intend to make it up for it by adding content in actually relevant/lore-compliant parts of Fabrication, such as DRM cracking, making prototypes and etc. Yes, sadly jobs like xenobiology will have to go, but that's because they're essentially barely lore-compliant, unmaintained deadweight. As for telescience, that's one thing we might keep, but it needs further discussion.

15 hours ago, OstianFox said:

Recently I have been trying to do niche science things to get people more interested in running it, but again hearing it's all going to be pointless is frustrating. 

We're still a good 3 years away from NBT2 or so, so I don't think you should feel discouraged from doing stuff right now.

15 hours ago, OstianFox said:

On top of that, what do I do for my RD who I have enjoyed playing for years?

Just because your old position isn't present in a new hierarchy doesn't mean it invalidates your curriculum.

[SeniorScore]

2 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

I don't agree with the mantra of "don't worry about things until they become problems" generally speaking but it's a good point that if every available contractor job is filled with corporates, then there probably wouldn't be enough to become a majority anyway. I'll keep it in mind and see if we can do away with the percentage divide between freelancers and corpos since reception on that hasn't been too good anyway.

Typically, I would agree about it being a bad mantra but I feel this issue specifically the desire to ensure corpos don't dominate the server is a bit overblown. As much as people like to counter-culture, the desire to not be corporate is pretty common for a variety of reasons (if I have to see people unironically talking about insurance one more time I'm throwing myself into the supermatter), and with the aforementioned limited slots against the total count, I don't feel having to sit there because you got out rolled on an even smaller job slot list than before if they were limited further.

[OstianFox]

11 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

I don't understand from what perspective you could say "gutted" when the entire department is being remade ground-up. What's on this development diary is just the basic skeleton of what we want to do with R&D, which we haven't even expanded upon because we haven't gotten to actually implementing said rework. If you're talking about removing jobs like xenobiology, we intend to make it up for it by adding content in actually relevant/lore-compliant parts of Fabrication, such as DRM cracking, making prototypes and etc. Yes, sadly jobs like xenobiology will have to go, but that's because they're essentially barely lore-compliant, unmaintained deadweight. As for telescience, that's one thing we might keep, but it needs further discussion.

Well when you said that science has never worked in this setting is.... frustrating as a science main and something I heavily dont agree with so my use of the term gutted was watching 3 sections of science I've seen really just fall off and be left to the wayside. There is only so much science can do currently with a lack of any work on fixing bugs or updates to the systems so of course it's going to look like deadweight when people do move on from it over time. It's even more so people dont want to involve when things are constantly getting nerfed to point of why even make anything with science nowadays?

Moving on I dont agree that the science team as a whole doesnt work in the setting but I do agree that some parts are iffy at best on it's involvement with our lore. But if the surveyor is meant to be one who looks at expeditions and stuff, I personally think there should be more then 1. In my brain I am merged all of Xenobio/bot/arch into Surveyor, as you know, someone who will look at strange fauna/flora/artifacts. And having one of them feels like if said person is more into say... flora, then they might not be keen to focus on one thing during an expedition. I know it was said to not get obsessed over details but I am really asking there not be just 1 there.

 

Otherwise, I like the concept so far, bar my nitpicking. Breaks us off from the mould of other servers to do our own thing.

[MattAtlas]

16 hours ago, OstianFox said:

Well when you said that science has never worked in this setting is.... frustrating as a science main and something I heavily dont agree with so my use of the term gutted was watching 3 sections of science I've seen really just fall off and be left to the wayside. There is only so much science can do currently with a lack of any work on fixing bugs or updates to the systems so of course it's going to look like deadweight when people do move on from it over time. It's even more so people dont want to involve when things are constantly getting nerfed to point of why even make anything with science nowadays?

I agree with all of these things, but these are things that happened in the past some 7-8 years ago, they did not happen as a consequence of NBT2 planning. Science has been in this state for a long time and I bring these points up to let people know why that department needs to be remade from the ground up. We know what happened was wrong and effectively killed Science, the point of us saying is so that people know we're on the right path when we rework it.

As for it never being updated, the truth of the matter is that a department gets as many updates as there are developers that play it. Developers have limited time on their hands and can only code so many things, so they'll mostly always pick something that they can interact or play with rather than a huge game-spanning rework for a department that they do not play. Science never had any players in it that were inclined towards development after 2018, so that's a big reason why it's in this state.

16 hours ago, OstianFox said:

Moving on I dont agree that the science team as a whole doesnt work in the setting

Science does not work because the act of researching new things does not make sense in a canon setting. Research can't be canon because we can't constantly keep making new research items, and having to research the same things over and over again is a gigantic plot hole. 

16 hours ago, OstianFox said:

But if the surveyor is meant to be one who looks at expeditions and stuff, I personally think there should be more then 1. In my brain I am merged all of Xenobio/bot/arch into Surveyor, as you know, someone who will look at strange fauna/flora/artifacts. And having one of them feels like if said person is more into say... flora, then they might not be keen to focus on one thing during an expedition. I know it was said to not get obsessed over details but I am really asking there not be just 1 there.

We'll consider it, like I said, slot numbers are not final at all.

[Dreamix]

"""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."""

 

Disclaimer: I haven't been playing for the past many months (year?) and have only very loosely been following NBT3 and what's happening on the server or in the community. Apologies if this has been answered anywhere, or if I'm reaching into stuff that wasn't figured out yet.

 

My question is about the inclusion of corporate contractors: Why?

- It feels kinda forced the way I'm reading it, to have *any* corpo presence on the ship at any cost.

- They're not really liked, and corporations are very much losing their power. What does the ship and the company gain from inclusion of corporate contractors?

- It feels like it would cut off very fun possibilities for contracts or story arcs. Like going against one of the remaining corporations (or corporation aligned states), hurting it, stealing from them, betraying it for another one, or doing pretty much any actually "freelancer stuff".

- "Freelancer stuff" meaning stuff that may or may not be in the gray zone of law, not exactly legal but yeah, etc. Even stuff as simple as looting destroyed corpo ships' wrecks. Like I would imagine the contractors to be loyal to their corporations and report back whatever stuff the freelancer ship may do. It's like allowing foreign spies on your ship at all times, especially so if they'll be in jobs that handle sensitive stuff like the investigator.

 

Disclaimer: I don't want to pull any weight or influence this project or anything like that. ICV Hedgemaze was just a fun project I did a long while ago. I'm not saying this project should be like ICV Hedgemaze. It's just a free thought, I guess.

 

* In ICV Hedgemaze I opted for not including any corporate presence on the ship at all. Cause yeah, I imagined all the fun stuff that it would allow. Simple example I thought up on the spot: Align with Zavod for one event arc, to disrupt PMCG's supplies. A few months later work for PMCG. It's fine, cause it's a freelancer ship, that works for whoever pays for the job. Can't have that if there's corpo contractors on the ship cause: a) they're going to snitch, and b) the corpo will pull out the contractors when it finds out.

Edited Tuesday at 20:47 by Dreamix

[GreenBoi]

I think you're simultaneously underestimating corporate utility and overestimating their authority.

4 hours ago, Dreamix said:

- They're not really liked, and corporations are very much losing their power. What does the ship and the company gain from inclusion of corporate contractors?

Corporations are still corporations with a lot of useful resources and tools that'd be worth bargaining for. The Blood Diamond's Tier 3, the good one you'll want to work to stay around, is supposed to be equivalent to standard retail equipment. Getting any trace of that from corporate contracts would likely be amazing in-universe.

5 hours ago, Dreamix said:

- It feels like it would cut off very fun possibilities for contracts or story arcs. Like going against one of the remaining corporations (or corporation aligned states), hurting it, stealing from them, betraying it for another one, or doing pretty much any actually "freelancer stuff".

- "Freelancer stuff" meaning stuff that may or may not be in the gray zone of law, not exactly legal but yeah, etc. Even stuff as simple as looting destroyed corpo ships' wrecks. Like I would imagine the contractors to be loyal to their corporations and report back whatever stuff the freelancer ship may do. It's like allowing foreign spies on your ship at all times, especially so if they'll be in jobs that handle sensitive stuff like the investigator.

And this is where the corporations' waning influence comes in, you could feasibly do this under their nose and bribe or use some leverage to keep them from retaliating. Corporations would now be at the position where they have just enough resources to be targets of interest, but not enough to deal with everything. For wreckages, they could allow salvage rights to incentivize plunderers to make official deals with them, properly logging sites and assets rather than just being entirely in the dark while they lose stuff.
Concessions and deals like this are very realistic, I basically just described what British pirates were for the government as privateers against enemies- officializing an activity and weaponizing it to aid you over hurting.

[MattAtlas]

17 hours ago, Dreamix said:

My question is about the inclusion of corporate contractors: Why?

Because I believe it'll allow for far better roleplay depth and interactions as opposed to everyone being just a freelancer. I wanted to add some proper inter-branch conflict to the Blood Diamond because it'd be sad to skip on what I think is one of the best ways to create some real tension on the ship.

17 hours ago, Dreamix said:

- They're not really liked, and corporations are very much losing their power. What does the ship and the company gain from inclusion of corporate contractors?

Specialist knowledge (technology researchers, investigators, salvage techs) and jobs that the freelancer companies wouldn't have many people doing in the first place (most of the hospitality wing).

17 hours ago, Dreamix said:

- It feels like it would cut off very fun possibilities for contracts or story arcs. Like going against one of the remaining corporations (or corporation aligned states), hurting it, stealing from them, betraying it for another one, or doing pretty much any actually "freelancer stuff".

This will still be possible. In fact, I'd argue that the presence of corporates on the ship makes the choice have a lot more gravitas than if it were a foregone conclusion because everyone's a freelancer, since you have to actually consider who's on your crew, their reaction, convincing them, etc.

17 hours ago, Dreamix said:

- "Freelancer stuff" meaning stuff that may or may not be in the gray zone of law, not exactly legal but yeah, etc. Even stuff as simple as looting destroyed corpo ships' wrecks. Like I would imagine the contractors to be loyal to their corporations and report back whatever stuff the freelancer ship may do. It's like allowing foreign spies on your ship at all times, especially so if they'll be in jobs that handle sensitive stuff like the investigator.

There will be more on this in a future development diary, but corporations don't really have the means to instantly react to things anymore. Bluespace gates and travel are mostly gone, and corporations can't really muster the private forces to respond to intergalactic events anymore. In NBT2 it's the freelancer groups that hold all the cards, because they are now the ones with an actual fleet that can target corporate assets. Think about it this way: for the corporations, it's more profitable and safer to just accept the contract and give the freelancer groups the people they want, because then they have better relations with them in the future to negotiate with, and potentially pay them to do their dirty work. They're not the ones ever holding the knife by the handle.

 

 

[Quartzmech]

On 12/06/2026 at 03:34, MattAtlas said:

 

"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."

Definitely hope we'll keep bridge officer, its nice to have a role dedicated to flying shuttles and siding with command. Aside from feeling self important and flying the ship, bridge officers are also really interesting for on-ship conflicts, as they give command some extra bodies that are likely to be loyal even if the armsmen aren't, while also giving rebellious factions a potential in on the bridge outside of the XO. I think it'd add a lot to keep them.

Also, wanted to express my excitement for the off-ship interactions mentioned in this. I used to be a player who primarily focused on offships, and the idea of playing a mercenary crew sent to bring the fiends aboard the blood diamond to justice (or, alternately, the crew of the freighter the blood diamond has decided to rob) is right up my alley. I hope you'll be having options for the people on contract, too. I know that this might sound like the antagonist problem again, but at least for me the problem with antagonist was never being unable to participate in long form relationship forming RP, but the weight of the rules and knowing the round rests on your shoulders to provide entertainment. Playing an offship char in a defined role is much more inviting to me, and its nice when these get to interact with the crew.

[Quartzmech]

14 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

There will be more on this in a future development diary, but corporations don't really have the means to instantly react to things anymore. Bluespace gates and travel are mostly gone, and corporations can't really muster the private forces to respond to intergalactic events anymore. In NBT2 it's the freelancer groups that hold all the cards, because they are now the ones with an actual fleet that can target corporate assets. Think about it this way: for the corporations, it's more profitable and safer to just accept the contract and give the freelancer groups the people they want, because then they have better relations with them in the future to negotiate with, and potentially pay them to do their dirty work. They're not the ones ever holding the knife by the handle.

Not sure the degree to which you've considered this already, but it might help the vibes of this setting to not have reliable FTL communications, even if FTL travel still exists. Would help with making the ship feel more isolated, and give more plausibility for why we can get away with doing evilbad things occasionally and not getting caught (unless witnesses escape, of course).

[Dreamix]

18 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

Quote

- It feels like it would cut off very fun possibilities for contracts or story arcs. Like going against one of the remaining corporations (or corporation aligned states), hurting it, stealing from them, betraying it for another one, or doing pretty much any actually "freelancer stuff".

This will still be possible. In fact, I'd argue that the presence of corporates on the ship makes the choice have a lot more gravitas than if it were a foregone conclusion because everyone's a freelancer, since you have to actually consider who's on your crew, their reaction, convincing them, etc.

Dunno. It feels like it would create some sort of a dissonance. More so for the players playing the contractors. (Since command probably won't really care to consider the 1 or 2 contractor characters in round vs 20 or 30 actual freelancer characters. And they probably won't be considering what the characters who aren't in round are thinking.)

I can't find the words to describe it atm. But I mean the dissonance of like. You return to playing your Zavod character after a short break, and find out the ship has kinda betrayed and hurt Zavod. Why would your character stay on the ship that's actually and actively hurting your corporation? The answer is obviously that you OOCly like that character and want to play them on the ship, but the dissonance is still there. At some point people are going to go "yeah my character reasonably should just quit".

Similar to how on Horizon there's always been (very valid) complaints of like. During the giga killer arcs like konyang, when the crew was saving the world and the ship frequently was in danger, some people were going "yeah my character wouldn't want to be here". Though it's been a long while ago so my memory is rusty.

 

19 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

There will be more on this in a future development diary, but corporations don't really have the means to instantly react to things anymore. Bluespace gates and travel are mostly gone, and corporations can't really muster the private forces to respond to intergalactic events anymore. In NBT2 it's the freelancer groups that hold all the cards, because they are now the ones with an actual fleet that can target corporate assets. Think about it this way: for the corporations, it's more profitable and safer to just accept the contract and give the freelancer groups the people they want, because then they have better relations with them in the future to negotiate with, and potentially pay them to do their dirty work. They're not the ones ever holding the knife by the handle.

Same narrative dissonance I guess, is for the corporation that's putting these contractors on the ship. Like "the corporation needs the freelancers and the cash from contracting employees to the freelancer ship" is fine.

But there is a limit to it, to maintain narrative cohesion, and I think that limit is when the freelancer ship is using these contractors to actually hurt that corporation.

 

To summarise: I'm not saying contractors are a bad idea, I think they're really fun and cool and add good roleplay potential. But not if there's a possibility of the ship acting out against corporations. The way I see it, can't have both at the same time.

[MattAtlas]

9 hours ago, Quartzmech said:

Definitely hope we'll keep bridge officer, its nice to have a role dedicated to flying shuttles and siding with command. Aside from feeling self important and flying the ship, bridge officers are also really interesting for on-ship conflicts, as they give command some extra bodies that are likely to be loyal even if the armsmen aren't, while also giving rebellious factions a potential in on the bridge outside of the XO. I think it'd add a lot to keep them.

We're definitely keeping the role because it's needed, what we're unsure about is the name of the job and its specific duties. There definitely needs to be a dedicated piloting role, which BO will definitely be, the problems are more related to their duties on the Bridge and the extent of their authority.

9 hours ago, Quartzmech said:

Not sure the degree to which you've considered this already, but it might help the vibes of this setting to not have reliable FTL communications, even if FTL travel still exists. Would help with making the ship feel more isolated, and give more plausibility for why we can get away with doing evilbad things occasionally and not getting caught (unless witnesses escape, of course).

Bluespace travel is mostly gone, since it relies on phoron. Warp will still exist, but it's a lot slower.

4 hours ago, Dreamix said:

I can't find the words to describe it atm. But I mean the dissonance of like. You return to playing your Zavod character after a short break, and find out the ship has kinda betrayed and hurt Zavod. Why would your character stay on the ship that's actually and actively hurting your corporation? The answer is obviously that you OOCly like that character and want to play them on the ship, but the dissonance is still there. At some point people are going to go "yeah my character reasonably should just quit".

I don't think this is dissonant, if anything it's a moral problem for the character. The whole setting is shaped up to give characters more internal conflicts to think about, naturally people will have to make characters that fit. Besides, it's not like you get a choice since you're stuck there. You can't really just leave a ship that's in the middle of nowhere.

4 hours ago, Dreamix said:

To summarise: I'm not saying contractors are a bad idea, I think they're really fun and cool and add good roleplay potential. But not if there's a possibility of the ship acting out against corporations. The way I see it, can't have both at the same time.

I disagree but I don't think I'm convincing you further until the development diary on the corporations and the freelancer groups comes out to be honest.