Mining in Explorer is a bit more convoluted than in other such games. Firstly, unless you want to run the risk of having your claim stolen you must get a permit to mine and/ or explore a system. Once you have one of these (which don't come cheap) you will need a *big* ship! In addition you will need the following equipment: orbital mapping probes, surface prospectors and several mining rigs. Orbital mapping probes are also required for mapping systems.
To explore or mine a system you will nearly alwasy need a ship with it's own jump enginesas it is rare for a jump gate to have been constructed in an unexplored system. It is quite common however for explored systems to still have unused resources and unmapped planets but these will require permits from the system's owners before mapping or mining can be started (and you often have to pay for the rights to sell the mined material)
Anyway, to work... once the player has arrived in the system the orbital probes can be launched. Each one can have it's own destination (although sending several to the same planet will increase the speed at which that planet is mapped). When the probes have mapped the planet the player will be informed to that effect. The player can either recall the probes and head back to civilisation to register the maps and possibly name the planet/ system or launch a surface prospector from the orbital probe to map the mineral deposits. Once again the player will be informed once the area requested has been mapped and can either recall the probes or send out the mining drones.
If the player leaves the system any orbital probes or surface prospectors which have been left behind will self destruct (to prevent others from raiding them for their data) mining machines are not similarly affected. The positions of all mining probes is recorded in the player's logbook automatically (including systems name, coordinates, entry point and planet id and coordinates)
When the player wants to retrieve the mining drones he/she must enter the system and signal them. If they have enough fuel left inside them then they will come to the surface, lift off and travel to the player's ship. If they do not have sufficient fuel to lift off they will come to the surface (all mining probes will remain below the surface to prevent detection) and signal the player to come and pick them up. All probes have individual signal codes which the player can set (as can other miner's) so it is possible, if the player can get hold of someone else's codes, to hijack the other's machines. Mining machines can be configured to stockpile the materials which have already been processed and can make several trips to and from the player's ship to transfer all the materials.
"Join the army they said, it's a man's life they said..." Thats exactly what you can do. Occaisionally the armed forces of each race will start recruitment drives on StarNET. When the player answers one of these adverts, provided background checks come up ok, he/she will become a member of the local fighter pilot corp. The player's ship will be sold off (the player can do this before joining to get the best deal). After a period of training and testing (which is shorter for experienced players and only needs to be taken the first time you join up) the player will be put on operational service. If the local area is quiet then the player will, if possible, be transfered to another station (the player has to fly there in his/her own, military issue, ship). Missions are issued every one or two days and will not consist of single tasks in most cases. The possible types of mission include:
=> Patrol. Fly around the designated area making sure everything is ok.
=> Recon. Get in there and get some info.
=> Hunt. Information shows that x is in area y but we aren't sure of the exact location. Find it.
=> Destroy. Guess
=> Follow. Find out where x is going but don't be seen!
=> Attack. Guess....
=> Escort.
=> Protect.
=> Run Away! Run Away!
=> Undercover. I can't tell you for security reasons.
Each mission will consist of one or more of the above tasks string together by the DUM/mission generation system.
Promotion and awards depend on your sucess and the difficulty of the game (medium difficulty gives the fastest promotion whereas easy and hard games take forever). Promotions are also affected if you leave the armed forces.
Every year (except during wars...) the player will be given the option to leave the armed forces. Doing so will allow the player to continue as normal but it does mean that if he/she joins the forces again then his/her rank may not increase as quickly as it would otherwise.
If you are on a station which is taken over you stand a good chance of being killed. If the station breaks away from it's government you will have the option to leave and move to another post or to remain and 'defect' to the station command.
Sometimes you will be posted to a capital ship rather than a station in which case the location of your base will be constantly changing. This will be accounted for by the navicomp.
Players will be able to be put in charge of stations. This will mean that players can (but not must) have control of the day-to-day running of the station. It will also be possible for players to expand the station, especially ground based ones.
Thes are given in decending order of age (you will not that Humans are fairly low down!) and this is NOT a complete list. I'm only detailing the major races here. If you want REALLY detailed info on any of the races then please mail me and I'll try to get a full history and features list done... just don't hold your breath; my prority is code!
The second oldest known race are the Vaipen, who are thought to be some 5,000 to 10,000 years younger than the Ovaska. Like the Ovaska the Vaipen are part of a single hive-mind collective but the Vaipen hive mind is much stronger than that of the Ovaska. It is a scientifically established fact that no matter where a memeber of the Vaipen collective is a contact is still maintained with the core of the hive mind on the Vaipen homeworld. The link is weaker the futher away the individual gets from the hive core or a hiveship (see below for more on these things).
Very little is known about the Vaipen and no-one has ever seen the Vaipen homeworld. This is partly because of the intense secrecy which the Vaipen ensure surrounds their affairs and movements and partially because of the way visitors are welcomed....
What is know is mainly due to guesswork; The Vaipen are insectiod in shape with hard chinin exoskeletons which can withstand direct blaster shots with little or no damage. They breath a mixture of methane, hydrogen, carbon monoxide/ dioxide and other basic hydrocarbonous gasses. All members of the race have stong telepathic and telekinetic abilities which allow them to remain in contact with the hive mind. Nearly all Vaipen who have been seen stand about 15 feet tall and have pronounced eyes while have been attributed to their apparent native atmosphere which must be akin to that of Saturn's moon Titan. Little is known about their internal physiology, diet or social interaction.
All members of the Vaipen appear to 'own' a ship based around organic technology and, athough no-one has ever seen inside one of these creatures, it is speculated that the craft has a symbiotic relationship with the pilot Vaipen where the pilot relies on the respiratory systems provided by the craft and the craft depends on the fast reactions of the pilot although these ships have been known to fly themselves). Another theory put forward is that these ships provide a stronger link to the hive mind, a theory strengthened by the fact that the reactions of the hive as a whole apprear to increase in the presence of one of the Vaipen's gargantuan hiveships. These monsters are organic technology on an awsome scale; 12 miles long and up to 5 miles wide. They can move as fast as any of the major race's, much smaller, battleships (nearly twice as fast as an Earth SuperDreadnought) and are so heavily armored that practically nothing can hurt one. All the hiveships are organic based technology and apear to thrive in systems with white/blue suns, possibly feeding off the radiation. No-one has yet seen a hiveship used in battle... and it is quite certain that anyone who got the chance would be highly impressed... for a very short time.
Ok... heres the fun part. Explorer will be based around a small bootsrap loader which will start up the library code. All the functionality of Explorer, it's gfx routines and so on will be implemented via libraries. This means that it will be easy to produce different versions of the code. As things stand at the moment I am considering writing versions of the libraries for AGA and RTG. (as a combined AGA/RTG lib is too slow on AGA and clumbersome on RTG) However, because of the structure of the libraries it should be possible for 3rd parties to develop ECS routines.
The 3D engine will be a lightsourced, shaded, texturemapped engine which will include variable lighting, transparency and fog effects (you won't believe how easy fog is once you get your head around it). The user will be able to select the detail levels, rendering method (plain polygon up to full rendering) and rejection systems (I will be using a painter algorithm which automatically adjusts itself, thanks to some tricky queue code, to keep the speed up at the expense of detail, this can be turned off if you don't mind slowdown in complex views.) I will, probably, be using Kalms CPU3BLIT1 c2p routine in the AGA version for best performance.
The other graphics engines will render onto a normal intuition screen (minus titlebar and gadget of course) for maximum OS compatability.
Input devices are interpreted by control modules which watch the ports and produce signals which the user can configure in the game controls editors. Each ships will have it's own actions and movement definitions which can be triggered by user defined keys.
All the systems controls can be defined and each ship's controls can be seperately configured (optional). Many ships have preset maneuvers which will be triggered via a single keypress (like a flip roll).
Each one of the control modules will monitor a certain port. The modules are specifically written to take certain port states and produce defined results. These results ae fed into the control interpreter which maps module outputs to control states using user defined settings.
This is going to be a nasty one but it should improve the game incredibly. In most other space simulators ships move at random through the universe, rarely having any form of interaction. I will deal with this problem through (drum roll please.. thankyou) The Fleet System. On the most basic level this system will make several ships operate as if they were under coordinated, cooperative control. This will allow me to form escorts and groups of fighters which appear to be under coordinated control from a battleship or command station. How does this work....
=> Fleets are defined in a hierarchy so that lower rank ships get orders from high rank ones.
=> The inteligence systems of the computer craft will be altered by 'orders' sent from a higher rank ships. This is really just the high level intelligence routines affecting the lower level ones.
=> The player will recieve orders from higher level ships via the communication system. These orders must be followed (as they will set certain rules in the engine which will reduce the player's rating if the orders are not followed.
=> In an escort the player must remain within x miles of the escorted ship.
=> If the player is commanding the fleet, or at least part of it, then a seperate screen will be available to give orders to ships under the player's rank.
A varient of this allows the player to employ others, or to be employed by a company, to follow trade routes or map systems.
1.1A Beyond Top Secret, Timothy Good (Sidgwick & Jackson) Page: 540
1.3A Branney and Girvin, 'Hyperspatial Dynamics' Foreman Press #2189.4354
1.4A New Scientist, issue 2022 'Planes, trains and wormholes' 1.4B New Scientist, issue 4324 'Fly me to the stars' 1.4C Jackson and Moss, 'Theories of interstellar travel', Blackson 1.4D Maclean, 'Harnessing Quantum Gravity', Lewis Associates, June 2134 1.4E "Hyperspace, jumppoints and related matter" translated from Higher Mogensen.
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So if you have more ideas for Explorer 2260, e-mail Chris Page at:-
dasoft zetnet.co.uk
There web site is at:-
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mailman.dnet.co.uk