The Starmourn Blog

I recently updated the Scatterhome page with a lot of info on how they self-govern without a formal ‘government.’ Here’s an OOC description, but there’s a long-ish history of how the system evolved from all-out-anarchy to self-governance without a permanent formal government on the Scatterhome page. While there’s no permanent government, the citizens of Starmourn have worked out a system of governing themselves, for regardless of their antipathy for formal government, someone has to be able to command their armada, someone has to be able to spend Marks on the city’s behalf, and so on.

It works like this: every citizen of Scatterhome has a formal Influence number.

Influence is gained by doing things that help Scatterhome, like taking Cosmpiercers, killing enemies while they’re in the city (or even via outright bribery…this is Scatterhome after all.)

Influence does, however, slowly drain away with time. Scatterhomeans mostly care what you’ve done for them lately.

When someone wants something done, they put out a Call for that thing. For instance, one might put out a Call to kick someone you don’t like out of the city. The Call runs for 1 day (24 rl hours), during which people may vote yea or nay on the Call. Every influence point that person has counts as one vote for yea or nay – one person one vote is not the Scatterhome way.

People are allocated powers within Scatterhome this way too. There are a few sets of powers, and someone may Call to bestow those powers on themselves or someone else.

If one places a Call that is unsuccessful, a small amount of Influence is lost, and it’s also possible to Call to besmirch someone’s reputation, in which case that person loses some influence.

Essentially, this system means that those who work to help Scatterhome (in the ways that can be measured at least) will have vastly greater influence over the goings-on in the city than those who don’t, and anyone can submit Calls to do a variety of things. We don’t know how it’ll play out, as we’ve never implemented a system like this before, and I’m not aware of any other game that has either. We do think it’ll be interesting to see and a new experience for Scatterhomeans who might be used to how government tends to work in our other games.

Remember to go read about the history of how the system evolved (towards the bottom of the page).

Those of you who are already players of one of our MUDs probably know what the retirement system is, but briefly, it’s a system whereby you can permanently retire a character and receive credits for some percentage of the value of the character and its stuff as calculated by us. You can then take those credits and put them into a new character on the same game or one of our other games.

People have been asking about retirement and Starmourn since we first revealed the project to the world, and we’re finally ready to reveal how it’s going to work. (It’s not complicated.)

We’re going to allow retirement into Starmourn but only 3 months after we put the game in full release (meaning anyone can access the game and the world will not be reset/wiped going forward). After that three months is over, people with existing characters will have 30 days to spend any retirement credits on them after which they aren’t eligible for retirement credits any more. New characters will, as per our other games, have 30 days before they’re unable to receive retirement credits.

The reason we’re instituting a delay is because what we really don’t want to see is people retiring their characters in our other games on day 1, playing Starmourn, and then really regretting their decision. It’s not that we think Starmourn won’t be awesome, but it’ll be the new shiny, and we think it’s highly likely that people will dig themselves a hole and regret it. We also can’t allow people to back out of retirement because then what we’ll see is a flood of people leaving the other games in order to try out the new game, many with no intention of doing anything but playing around and then returning to their previous game. That’s disruptive to both the existing games and Starmourn.

Now you know!

 

 

I just put up a page on Cosmpiercers, which is the first of what will eventually be multiple ways for the player civilizations (Scatterhome, Song Dominion, Celestine Ascendancy) to compete via game mechanics with each other. Enjoy!

Just put up the companion page to the recent Economy page. This one’s all about how you extract the raw resources that are then used to produce various goods. Read up here!

Go read all about resources, cargo, and autofactories to learn about how players are going to produce a whole range of goods!

As you may or may not already know, all characters in Starmourn have a ‘mindsim’ in their heads. This is basically your personal AI assistant. Of course, we don’t really need to have mindsims except in an RP sense, so what’s the point unless they have a little personality?

Along with naming your mindsim, you’ll be able to select a personality for it, though there’s also a ‘default’ option. For instance, current personality types include:

Bitsy: Though slightly disrespectful at times, users will find this mindsim to be a helpful personality and loyal friend. From First Axiom Subsidiaries.

MIM: The minimal interface mindsim, created for the user who prefers succinct, to the point communication from their assistant. Developed by the W’hoorn military before being turned over for civilian use.

Mavis: Mavis was developed for the mindsim user who requires a high degree of deference and respect. With a polite attitude and a robust vocabulary, Mavis is the perfect companion for the refined, intelligent space traveler.

Zneer: A product of Aphador Cooperative, Zneer is marketed as a novelty personality among mindsim users. Due to a bug in its programming that is now viewed as a feature, the Zneer personality greatly resents being stuck in the user’s head and doesn’t like biological beings period. It considers itself superior to the user, and is, to put it bluntly, a real asshole.

Marvin: This mindsim personality attained a uniquely glum and nihilistic style all its own after being exposed to a laboratory of perennially depressed coders stuck on a far-off asteroid owned by the developing corporation of Darkside Logistics, a fledgling operation that could only afford remote, cheap real estate. Soon after Marvin’s release, the company folded.

So how does this end up playing out?

Well, obviously, we haven’t actually developed AI assistants. What these do is basically skin various system messages you’d normally get related to things like messages, news, your wetwiring system, some ship-related messages, and more. The idea is to ‘skin’ the normal messages, with the more common normal messages having multiple choices to pull from per mindsim personality. We think that long-time users will probably end up using the default or MIM choices, but that you guys will also have a good time exploring their personalities.

So, examples!

Say you have a new message. Here’s what the various personalities might say (there’s multiple choices for this, but I’m just giving you one for each):

[Default]: You have one new message.

[Bitsy]: Boss, looks like we have one new message to look at.

[MIM]: 1 NEW MESSAGE.

[Mavis]: There is one new message waiting for Sir, would he like us to retrieve it? (Obviously, would be different based on gender.)

[Zneer]: Incredibly, someone has cared enough to send you a message. You, of course, are such an ungrateful, undeserving pile of karmic tragedy that you haven’t even read it yet.

[Marvin]: You have a new message. I didn’t get one and now I’m drowning in a familiar swamp of despair and self-pity.

 

Or maybe you have entered an invalid section when trying to read news:

[Default]: You entered an invalid section.

[Bitsy]: Watch your syntax, boss. There are no sections like that.

[MIM]: NO SECTION FOUND.

[Mavis]: We apologize, but we have no record of the section that Ma’am has requested.

[Zneer]: You’ve entered an invalid section, and that’s not even in the top 10 dumbest things you’ve done today.

[Marvin]: That section is as invalid as the idea that my future holds anything other than misery.

 

Perhaps your wetwiring regeneration has fired up:

[Default]: Wetwiring regeneration starting.

[Bitsy]: Firing up wetwiring regeneration, boss. What a rush!

[MIM]: WETWIRING REGEN ACTIVATING.

[Mavis]: We have commenced wetwiring regeneration.

[Zneer]: Your disgusting bio body is hurt. Again. Firing up the wetwiring regen, though I fantasize about the day I can just let you bleed out.

[Marvin]: Wetwiring regen begun, but it’s not going to save you from going to the grave eventually. I so look forward to its black embrace.

 

Maybe you tried to send a tell to someone who isn’t available:

[Default]: That person is not available at this time.

[Bitsy]: Hate to break it to you, but they aren’t around. Should I try again later?

[MIM]: RCVR NOT AVAILABLE.

[Mavis]: We are unable to send a tell to that individual.

[Zneer]: Don’t bother, monkey. That person is unavailable and wouldn’t want to hear from you anyway. If you threw a party, nobody would come.

[Marvin]: That person isn’t available for a tell right now. I hope it’s not cancer but it probably is. I’ll probably get it next. Figures.

 

As the game goes post-launch and is further-developed, we’ll regularly expand the mindsims, and may introduce new personalities as well (though we can’t have too many or else we’ll have an issue with it taking too much time to add a simple new message to the game if we’re having to write them for 20 mindsims or whatnot).