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Design Notes
- The game is set in a sci-fi future.
- There is a player character who is embedded in the world.
- The player can develop.
- The player commands/flies a ship. The ship becomes a kind of NPC.
- The ship may have crew. Crew may be NPCs.
- How far in the future is this set?
- Are we based around Sol/Earth or further afield
- Do we posit FTL travel or not?
- Is our space a human space? Or are there aliens?
- What is the driving event?
- Is this a ship construction game?
- Is this a trading game?
- Is this an exploration game?
- Is this a combat game?
- Is this an outpost/station/construction game?
- Is this a research-driven game?
In StarSector the player is the captain of a fleet of ships. It's an exploration, trading, combat & outpost building game with some narrative elements. The player gains experience and levels up to get skill points that can be spent on skill upgrades. They also gain story points which can be used to "fix" problems (e.g. avoiding an unwinnable combat) and enhance skills. Ships are modular with a range of upgrades that can be obtained either directly or through blue prints. Colony building is a big part of the late game but I've only reached it once. The narrative arc is about the sector being cut off from the Domain, the uber society and about the conflict between humans and AI.
In Starcom the player is the captain of a single ship. A big element is the modular ship designer and obtaining components to enable research to construct better modules (e.g. engines come in 3 tiers). The narrative is about being accidentally sent to another sector of space where there is a conflict with an ancient race going on. Again it’s an exploration, trade, & combat game although the trade is much more perfunctory and about acquiring the materials for ship building since there isn’t anything else to sink your wealth into. The narrative is a more central element here than StarSector.
OOOTP around version 3/4 when I mainly played it was a largely statistical baseball simulator. A key aspect was that it simulated the Major Leagues and Minor Leagues so you got the full farm-system experience and could watch prospects arrive, develop, and make it to the majors. This allowed you to get attached to certain prospects and invested in their careers. Actually playing the baseball games was less important in those versions (and the sim of the game was far more rudimentary than in later versions) and you might simulate days, weeks, or even months and just look at the results rather than playing each game individually.
A game where you play a captain with an identified crew. A combat/exploration/trading game with a strong narrative around feuding factions. Includes space and crew combat.
Some of the world building here in the mixture of “old west” and Chiba-style gritty hi-tech/low-life. There is a kind of dramatic on-the-edgeness about it.
The Expanse Series In the first 5 books James Holden & his crew pilot their "stolen" Martian destroyer, the Rocinante, around the solar system trading and dealing with piracy along with an extra-terrestrial threat narrative.