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thegreatspacerace2022-11-19 06:30 pm
space_aces) wrote in thegreatspacerace2022-11-19 06:30 pm
Entry tags:
November News Post
Greetings Privateers! It's been a couple weeks now and the modteam hopes this post finds you all well. Now that people have settled there are a couple of community announcements to make:
ACTIVITY
Because this is everyone's first month, no one has to do activity check for any of their characters in November. In addition, since it is customary to waive Activity in December for the Holidays, no one will be held to Activity in the second month of Space Race. Thus, there will be no Activity Check for the first two months of the game. Keep an eye out for January!
POLLS
The modteam will like to ask the community a question about future testdrive memes and applications. Because these answers will affect potential applying players as well as existing players, these polls are open to all.
Should every Test Drive Meme take place in SUPERBIA, or should the location change depending on the upcoming event?
Arguments: Canonically every character in Space Race appears in SUPERBIA and receives or retrieves their ship upon joining the game. Players may wish to greet new characters or give them assistance escaping the dangers of SUPERBIA. However, the playerbase may wish to skip playing this phase now that the game has opened and they have played this out for themselves. Some might prefer the alternative of having unique TDM prompts based on the upcoming event planet. This comes at the expense of "spoiling" the next month's event and perhaps being redundant with it.
Should there be a Ship Section to the Application?
Arguments: Space Race is not intended to be a "crunchy" game. The inventory of characters is not moderated, and obtaining new spaceships and exchanging space ships is easy in-universe and can be handwaved as occurring at any point. However, the mods may be overestimating how often players will want to change spaceships. In practice, players may be very attached to their original spaceships. Players may appreciate more concrete details on each other's space ships being written down, even if it results in a longer application and opens space ship design to more mod scrutiny.
ACTIVITY
Because this is everyone's first month, no one has to do activity check for any of their characters in November. In addition, since it is customary to waive Activity in December for the Holidays, no one will be held to Activity in the second month of Space Race. Thus, there will be no Activity Check for the first two months of the game. Keep an eye out for January!
POLLS
The modteam will like to ask the community a question about future testdrive memes and applications. Because these answers will affect potential applying players as well as existing players, these polls are open to all.
Should every Test Drive Meme take place in SUPERBIA, or should the location change depending on the upcoming event?
Arguments: Canonically every character in Space Race appears in SUPERBIA and receives or retrieves their ship upon joining the game. Players may wish to greet new characters or give them assistance escaping the dangers of SUPERBIA. However, the playerbase may wish to skip playing this phase now that the game has opened and they have played this out for themselves. Some might prefer the alternative of having unique TDM prompts based on the upcoming event planet. This comes at the expense of "spoiling" the next month's event and perhaps being redundant with it.
Should there be a Ship Section to the Application?
Arguments: Space Race is not intended to be a "crunchy" game. The inventory of characters is not moderated, and obtaining new spaceships and exchanging space ships is easy in-universe and can be handwaved as occurring at any point. However, the mods may be overestimating how often players will want to change spaceships. In practice, players may be very attached to their original spaceships. Players may appreciate more concrete details on each other's space ships being written down, even if it results in a longer application and opens space ship design to more mod scrutiny.
no subject
Should every Test Drive Meme take place in SUPERBIA, or should the location change depending on the upcoming event?
You might do a little of both? Have a Superbia section for the new arrivals to play with and then something else to give them a taste of what the game might be like. If you can keep the Superbia section fresh with new events or new places of the ship to explore the 'something else' bit might not be nessacary but like you said, I would worry about that getting stale.
Should there be a Ship Section to the Application?
I do think it would be rather nice to have a list of the ships just to be able to see what the other players have, but if it would be too much work its not really needed. I'm just curious about what everyone went with. I don't know that this would need to be on the application. Maybe there could be a 'ship' page where people can drop a comment with information about their ship or a link to a wiki if they chose a canonical vessel.
no subject
Hmm... on one hand, it would help getting characters settled in and get their ships, and learn where things begin. For a game similar in nature to High Seas, there wouldn't be that big of a distance between the characters' destination and SUPERBIA itself.
All of that said, I personally favor new TDM locations, with newer characters potentially being pulled in alongside the group and arriving on the planet/station/location in question, and giving them a starship that could favor their use. Perhaps handwaving that, reading from the choices taken by SUPERBIA's first characters, it learns what kinds of ships would be the most useful to them.
Should there be a Ship Section to the Application?
I think there should be. In space operas, a starship is just as much of a character as the characters living in it, so having it designed as part of the app wouldn't hurt IMHO. That, and having the player define how will the starship function with the "two-out-of-three" rule defined for the game.
no subject
Personally, I think if we can get more information/gameplay surrounding some of the weirdness of SUPERBIA (as alluded to in the "Skeletons In The Closet" prompt from TDM #1), it might be worth it to revisit the location in future rounds. However, if there aren't plans to expand on that, using new locations might be a better choice.
Should there be a Ship Section to the Application?
I think that if we're not going to have people playing through the Shipyard portion of SUPERBIA, it's probably a good idea to have a Ship Section in the Application.
I like the idea of having a post to track what ships the characters have, as suggested by Second Doctor's player :)