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Space Station
The "Spectrum" class space station is the cutting edge of technology in the time that the game takes place. Adaptable and extensible, these stations and their jump gates allow humanity to extend it's reach into the vastness of the galaxy.
The station has a base amount of storage capacity for holding station commodities. Once this limit has been reached, no further commodities may be stored in the station which will cause ships to be unable to deliver their cargo.
If a ship is unable to deliver it's cargo, it will wait for the next available window, however, ships will not wait forever and will seek other opportunities if made to wait too long.
Plots are how space on the station is put to productive use. Plots can augment a station stat or give the it additional functionality. Some types of plots include:
- Crew Quarters
- Officer Quarters
- Cafeteria
- Training Facilities
- Medical Facilities
- Confinement Facilities
- Traveler Quarters
Plots should be simi-autonomous and should react based on the people who occupy them. If a messy person lives in a residential plot, then that plot should have a state that reflect an increased level of clutter. This interaction should not require player intervention and should be a source of entertainment to see how various different plots change over time in respect to their occupants.
Plots can come in two major varieties, station controlled and contract. Station controlled plots are plots that the station has full dominion over and can be changed, upgraded, downgraded or removed without notice. Contract plots are plots that have been rented out (often for profit) to external agents who enter an agreement that the plot can not be modified until a certain amount of time has elapsed.
The density of a selected plot type will tell the system how many occupants the plot will accept before starting to reject new ones from using the facilities. Not every plot type will support plot densities and will be displayed in the list (though grouped together) as if they were distinct plot types.
In most cases the higher the density the leaser the desire is to live in those places. Ideally stimulants and business want the least dense places to live and work that is within their budget. Productivity and morale could suffer if stimulants are exposed to long periods where they are unable to find personal space.
In addition to a monetary cost, some plots require specific commodities or other game conditions in order to facilitate construction.
The station should have hard points located around the exterior that should allow for the mounting of hardware at those spots. In many cases these will be defensive items but could also have other uses (such as remote sensing devices).
This is a very simple interface that allows the player to view the outside of their station and it's immediate surroundings. They should be able to monitor the jump gate as well as observe ships on/off-loading cargo and personnel.
If a player has purchased/produced any hard points for the station, these point should be selected and populated on this screen.
If any invaders attempt to destroy or take the station over by force, this interface will allow the player to monitor that situation.
This is the primary interface for configuring the operation and Load-out of the station. In this interface the player should be able to assign plots, GET or release staff, interact with special NPCs, observe the simulated lives of those inhabiting their station, and defend their station from intruders.
Characters should be able to be interacted with via this interface. Selecting a character should put a selection identifier on the character and provide a world-space GUI element for getting more information about the character. In some instance when special actions can be applied (such as interacting with a special character or firing/air-locking a crew member).
This interface should have the following on-screen information/interact-ables:
- Collapsible station deck selector
- Current total of available credit
This interface should be a search-able/order-able list of all inhabitants of the station. This list should be (optionally) grouped together by Deck or Character type.
Each inhabitant should be a row entry with key information about that character. When a row is double clicked the camera should be moved to the location of the selected inhabitant.
The rows should support context menus to do quick actions associated with that character including firing/air-locking, transferring station crew to ships, evicting, imprisoning, etc.
Station crew can only be transferred to a ship if that ship is currently at the station.
This interface should show all currently owned ships and give statistics on their location and current operations. Each ship should represented as a row and should optionally be sorted by command group or sector.
Each row should be expandable to show the ship roster, however, direct ship to ship transfers are not possible unless the ships are in the came command group, located in the same sub-sector or are currently at the station. Ship to ship transfer are don by dragging and dropping a crew row onto a different ship row. When a drag/drop is started all expanded crew rosters should collapse to allow for easier navigation as well as automatically scrolling when the mouse is near the top or bottom of the scroll area.
There should be a list of all currently accepted missions. These entries should be a list on one side with the description/details on the right hand side.
From this interface missions should be able to be abandoned.