Star Control: The Multiverse thread

There was no Sentient Millieu, but what about the Melnrome or the Taalo?  The latter, at least, were situated in our rough area of the galaxy.  Without the Ur-Quan to wipe them out, will we possibly stumble across them?  Or find their ruins?

I don't think we'll find the Melnrome nor the Taalo because:

"Stardock can include the SC2 aliens but out of respect for Paul and Fred chose not to." - Frogboy

https://www.pcgamesn.com/ghosts-of-the-precursors/ghosts-of-the-precursors-legal-clash-star-control

Ah, but the Taalo were merely a word on a screen, not included aliens. 

Paul and Fred are already suing Stardock up and down for everything you can imagine (even obstructing them from making Ghosts of the Precursors.  That's insane Stardock is not.), so I doubt we will get any Star Control anything in SC:O and all we can hope for is that Star Control easter eggs stay in SC:O.

"Stardock now seems to think that not only can they use our aliens, ships and narrative without our permission, but thinks that we cannot make a sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters without their permission -- this is where we got really, really angry."

https://dogarandkazon.squarespace.com/

Our position on what species we will include has changed for obvious reasons.

Because of the differing histories of each universe, the Ur-Quan, Spathi, etc. of the Origins universe will have have a very different set of experiences.

The initial release of Origins takes place in 2088 so you are not going to be running into those particular aliens.  But by 2110s as the player's map expands beyond the initial 40x40 parsec area, you can expect to run aliens associated with the earlier Star Control games.

We already have threads about the legal dispute, please stay on topic.

Edit:

No Sentient Milieu opens up some interesting possibilities, the Ur-Quan might not have been split into different sub-species, the Burvixese and Gg might still be alive.

No Sentient Millieu means a lot of things have changed.  The Star Control: Origins map is based on the Prime universe (i.e. "the real world") positions of stars.  So the locations of various aliens remains to be seen.

Indeed.  A whole different chain of events result.

We also don't know yet who the Faction of Eight include.  

We as in we the players won't immediately or you haven't fleshed them out that much yet? >.>

. Generally speaking I prefer the role of imperfect narrator.

"well, what you'd expect the humans of 2088."

What I would expect of humans of 2088 is that they are still decades away from being able to leave their own solar system.  Of course, you can say that they discover natural wormholes in any year and it makes sense, but if you are talking about a ship that can do that without the assistance of some kind of natural phenomena then they would still be at least decades away from that.  Unless somebody give them that technology.  So I have a guess here that the Tywom in this story are like the Centauri were in Babylon 5, and they give the humans the technology to leave their own solar system.

If this is the case, a good backstory for the human ship would be that it was the only large ship that they have at the time.  It was originally designed to bring teams of scientists around the solar system on a long term mission to study the planets (probably mostly Jupiter and Saturn) and moons of our solar system.  So it has extensive science facilities (good background lore for the adventure game) and it had been been built with a massive hangar bay for drones, shuttles, equipment, collection/storage of samples (explaining all that space it has available to carry ships inside it as a mothership in the adventure game).  Even so, this is still a hangar bay from Tardis Inc, but it is enough for the players to suspend disbelief about the hangar bay.

One problem you have with the mothership from a lore perspective, and that most sci-fi that came before you has also had, is it's size.  Any ship said to carrier fighters, or especially other ships, inside of it is almost always way too small to actually do that.  In SCO's case the humans are just far too primitive to have built a mothership capable of carrying half-a-dozen smaller ships inside of it.  And they had no reason to build a ship like that this early in their history.  So the above explains this enough for gamers/sci-fi fans, who are already accustomed to forgiving (or, in most cases, never even noticing) this issue.  I can start blowing really big holes in my own explanation here, but most people won't notice the issue and those that do... this explanation will be enough for them to suspend disbelief and forgive it.

This is entirely a lore issue that has no impact at all on the actual game or game balance.

You're exactly right about the Star Control prototype ship making a trip to Jupiter.

https://www.stardock.com/games/article/487813/star-control-origins---my-trip-to-jupiter

The SCO ship is probably so large because they needed it to be for the power core and the experimental drive system they shoved on it.  It was meant to quickly explore the solar system, after all, and they didn't know how long that mission would take.

Maybe I am still misunderstanding the new lore or concept but I personally think it would be quite confusing to players to call Scryve conflict's universe THE Origins Universe. What makes it original? Why is it any more superior than UQM or Kessari universes?  Or any future user/dev universes?

I think THAT place (even if it is nothing else than the screen to select universes to teleport to) should be called Origins because you could then travel to other above mentioned universes thru it. I would then associate this Origins place with a word Omniverse, which contains in itself countless universes or just has interdimensional/interuniversal links/wormholes to them (however you prefer). Let the Scryve story be called Scryve Confilct universe or something but not Origins.

Origins name should be something monumental and useful/logical for many new pieces of content to come. Once again, I know the concept potentially could involve something like traveling between universes thru one place, I just think that the name of the current adventure campaign universe shouldn't be Origins itself, because the whole game already is.

Roma: I'm pretty sure SC2 called it a "mothership" and if they wanted an intricate explanation of it like the one you are giving they would have specifically mentioned all of that.  They were just assuming it was a mothership carrying smaller ships inside and not thinking it through to the point of realizing how big the mothership would actually have to be for that to be true.  This is one of, if not the most, common mistakes made in every sci-fi story.  Star Wars and Babylon 5 did think this through, which is the whole reason their ships seem so huge to other universes if you look at a ship comparison chart.  Most makers of sci-fi universes never think what I call the "engineering lore" through to any real degree, so most use "Tardis, Inc" cargo and hangar bays.  That's actually the normal thing, getting that aspect right is a very rare thing.  In an arcade game like SCO you don't really have a choice, you have go with Tardis, Inc mothership if you want a mothership that carriers small ships inside.  To accurately scale that, the mothership would pretty much fill the screen and you couldn't really use it in the game.  So SCO is really forced to go with "Tardis Inc hangar bays", just as any arcade game would have to do.

Ashog: I see your point.  Notice that in Brad's original post only the "Origins" timeline even had a name after the colon.  Just through experience of doing this stuff myself, I can tell that this hasn't actually been worked out anywhere in writing yet.  If it was, it would have been more organized and there would be a name after each colon.  The original post seems to be saying that Scryve is the early "prequal" story of Ur Quan, and SC3 is both in the future and also not a part of the "real" timeline that the Scryve and Ur Quan both are.  "This is how lore is creeated" and if this were my universe I would be looking to create a really cool explanation of how the SC3 timeline gets split off of the "real" Scryve/Ur Quan one to, at some point in the future, run parallel to the Origins timeline ones it catches up to that point in the timeline.

So the list in the original post is actually wrong.  It needs to separate the SCIII timeline from everything else, rather than listing it third in the "Origins" timeline.  So it would be more accurate to say...

Origins Timeline

2088-2120 SCO Scryve Era.  SCO is a prequel to the original SC1/2 story.

2120-???? SC1/SC2 Ur Quan Era.  This is the original SC1/SC2 story and timeline, so it is a part of the "SCO Universe".

????-???? Future SCO DLC.  The Origins Timeline version of the same era that SC3 exists within in an alternate timeline.

So, as you can see, the original games and story are contained within the SCO story, but never directly touched by SCO.  They are working around it to leave it as is, but also absorbing it into their own story now.  I think this is a change from what they had planned in the past, and what Brad meant by "that was before they sued" us.  From picking this apart like this, it appears too me that Stardock is now going to absorb the SC1/2 story into their own, without changing it... but continuing it with whatever DLC comes after it in their own timeline.  This is just my interpretation of this, but this seems to be what Brad is saying in this post.

And then, separately because it is an alternate timeline, not the same one as above...

????-???? SC3 Space Cow Era

I don't know what years SC3 is supposed to take place in, but it would be sometime after the end of the Ur Quan Era of the other timelines.  This alternate timeline only really exists to get SC3 and it's terrible story out of the "SCO Universe", so you can really just forget about this timeline and only think of the "Origins" timeline.  You might give this timeline it's own name, like "Unwanted Story Timeline", to further clarify that it is a whole different "Place" (  ) than the Origins timeline, but this whole timeline exists just to throw SC3 away.

The name Origins refers to the multi-dimensional gateways.

"We don't know who the faction of 8 are or what role the Origins (the multi-dimensional gateways) had in helping the Scryve against the Faction of Eight."

As for being the prime universe that would be a matter of perspective.

It was called flagship, I checked the manual.

Yes it has, both in Founder updates and on Discord. You're reading too much in the use of the colons.

No it isn't, the story in SCO takes place in a different universe than SC1/2 and Kessari.

As per the first post:

In SCO the Sentient Milieu never formed, there was no small nuclear war and no Androsynths.

Edit:

Sometimes I dislike the quoting system on these forums.

Let's break this down:

Re: Human technology level in 2088

Humans don't have FTL in 2088.  The Star Control program  has produced one Emdrive based ship which is a ship that can travel the solar system very fast but that's about it.

Re: The Fleet

The Vindicator doesn't carry ships.  It's too small.  Instead, other ships travel with it in its gravity wake which is based on modules on the ship.

Re universes vs. the Prime universe

There is no single universe.  It's a multiverse.   The prime universe (Origins) is the one that contains the Precursor Origins gates which allow travel to other universes as well.

Our area of space, for the base game, is a 40x40 parsec block.   To put that number into perspective, the Milky Way galaxy alone has a diameter of 30,000 parsecs.  

We refer to the Origins universe as the prime universe because it is the only one, that we know of, that you can travel to other universes from.

I think it's better to go with the Tardis hangar bay that the audience is used to accepting in just about all other sci-fi.  The ships magically following the mothership around in it's wake has more holes in it than swiss cheese.  That makes no sense at all on a lot of different levels.  It's not a huge issue or anything like that, but is definitely something that leaves be just shaking my head and smiling about it.  People are used to the Tardis Hangar Bay, almost all sci-fi ships have them.

As for the rest of it, apparently there is a lot of information about the universe that I haven't seen, because after these last posts none of it makes any sense too me.  I seem to be missing a lot of information.

Ok...

After reading through this all again, I think I get this better now.  Your "Origins" are Kevin Seimbiada's "Rifts" and are portals to other universes.  SC1/2 is does not come after your 2088 SCO timeline era, you will have your own alternate timeline era during the SC1/2 era.  An Origins portal might take you to the SC1/2 "universe" just like it might take you to Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, or Rifts (just to tip your hat to the guy who originally came up with all this in games;-).

So you've completely separated SCO, SC1/2, and SCIII into entirely separate universes that can never intertwine, other than something from the "prime universe" visiting an alternate universe because you seem to be saying this only works from one "Place".  Things from the prime universe can visit alternate universes, and things alternate universe can visit the prime universe, but things from alternate universes cannot visit other alternate universes.

So I think I do understand it now after reading through this thread again... it's pretty much straight-up Rifts.  Send Kevin a thank you note;-)

How do you get back, then? Or does travelling through an origin wormhole leave the wormhole open behind you so you're not trapped there?

Have you protested the ships flying with the Flagship since the early 90s?

So let's say... in the Origins Universe, the Ur-Quan evolved differently, maybe without being controlled by the Dnyarri.
But that's leads me to think of a retcon, maybe the races like the Tywom and Scryve, DID exist in the original SC:1,2,3 Universes, but each were, destroyed by the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah/Dnyarri rule, OR they existed in a different far-away sector~ 
Because if the old races evolved differently in Origins, the same could be said for the new races in the old universes!

.

As far as I know they did not "fly with the flagship" in SCO, they were carried inside it.  That's what the "hangar bay space" was.  I am not "protesting" it.  It is a lore thing that has no actual impact on the game.  Sci-fi lore is always, inevitably, wrong in many ways.  How can it not be?  Sometimes you make a conscience decision that it will be wrong for various reasons.  For example, it's "wrong" either way in this case.  Either the ships are magically following the mothership around, and presumably not seen in game so they are also invisible, or the ship has a "Tardis Inc Hangar Bay".  Either choice is "wrong", or inconsistant, it becomes a style choice of the designer of which one to go with.

So I am not saying "I am right and Stardock is wrong", I am saying "both ways are wrong, it is a style decision".  I would just go with Tardis Inc Hangar Bays.  It seems "less noticeable" too me.  The audience is accustomed to forgiving this already, in fact most players will never even notice the issue.  The ships magically following you around is a lot more noticeable, and the audience is not already accustomed to forgiving it.  They will have a lot of questions like...

Where are these ships following me around?  I don't see them.

How can these little ships travel for such long distances?

Why does the mothership require modules just so that other ships can follow it around?

If they are unpowered, and somehow being carried along with the mothership in the wake... why don't they all collide and bump into each other all the time, especially when the mothership turns?

If they are unpowered, how does the crew survive?  If they are powered, why don't they just fly under their own power as a fleet?

The "Tardis Hangar Bays" don't come with all of these types of questions.  The audience is accustomed to "Tardis Hangar Bays" and, in fact, most of them will never even notice any issue at all as is usually the case.

This is why I would just go with a hangar bay, which makes the modules make sense (original SC2 had "hangar modules", so there is your sign that they were carried internally in SC2).  The "traditional Tardis Hangar Bay" is something the audience already knows and accepts, the "following the mothership around" essentially highlights the issue and makes the player notice and question it.

"Masking" and "illusion" is a big part of game design and story/lore.  What the player doesn't notice, doesn't affect their opinion.