After Nova

Venting an idea

Until I bring this up somewhere, this idea won't leave me alone (I really need to focus on studying for a test right now). So, here goes.

Basically, last weekend I watched a long documentary type of thing on the History Channel titled "Life After Humans" (or something like that). It basically was what would happen to the world if humans were to suddenly not be here on Earth tomorrow morning at all, starting at a few days all the way up to a thousand years for now. 'Twas very interesting, and where this idea comes from.

The tentatively titled "After Nova" uses that concept heavily, except some humans are still left. For some reason or another, almost all of humanity vanishes from the Novaverse (I'm thinking some super-deadly virus created by the Polaris, likely a mistake, killing everyone). Very few people are left, perhaps at most a few million on a few worlds and/or stations. After the disappearance, 100 or so years past to where the plug would take place, and the player would be trying to fight for survival in a near empty universe.

Most worlds would be uninhabited, the man-made structures falling into heavy decay and disrepair. Derelict vessels in various states of disrepair would be floating all over the place, most of them long since ransacked. Various creatures that live in space, along with Hyperoids and Wraith, will be visible and moving about, some hostile, most minding their own business or swarming ships like bugs to lights during the night. The Wraith will likely have expanded to other areas as well. The Polaris might have died, and most of their ships originally did with them. However, feral Mantas and other of the sentient Polaris ships will be present, perhaps with various adaptations to survive without human aid.

The hypergate system would be entirely off-line, trading non-existant (everyone needs everything they can get, so prices would always be high), weapons and advanced outfits, especially ammunition, very rare, warships almost non-existant, and so forth. The ships you can fly might have issues with them visible, like an IDA Frigate looking somewhat rusty and half of it's running lights not working. While the exact same layout of systems and planets (and stations to some degree) are present, almost all the spaceports are gone, the planets and stations are in ruins and former civilization crumbling.

Whew, glad to get that out there. Anyways, I may or may not undertake this project (and if I do, it'd be after Colosseum). This is more of an idea vent than anything. Though I do ask that, if someone really likes this idea, to not start on this unless I make a clear decision not to pursue this.

Anyways, that's the random idea I absolutely had to get out here so I could concentrate on other things. Now lets hope I can study for this Spanish test that's in a hour.

Hey, cool idea! I'd help with it. I could do some ships, maybe.

Was it called "Life Without Us" by any chance? A book by that name came out recently.

Know what would be better? If this was based on the Novaverse after Humanity moved beyond the veil. It could be about the race of beings that stumble across the smoldering and decrepit remnants of the human civilization of the past.

Wow. I like your idea muchly - shivers went down my spine imagining it.

Nice, Josh! What you're proposing is at least as drastic as kicking civilization back to the period after 670 NC, when the Artemis terrorists blew the gate system (see Nova Preamble 1).

There's a period of collapse of interstellar government in the Traveller timeline, called The Long Night. I always thought that was a great name for it.

Curiously enough, I had a very vaguely similar idea a while ago -- inspired by a different source, though.

There's a very old Marathon addon, "Return to Marathon". The idea of the story is that you're coming back to Earth on this new ship; you've been in stasis a long time. Along the way, your ship drops by the original Marathon, over a hundred years after your original campaign there, and the computers onboard your ship detect activity. Thus, you're woken up to take a look.

Most of your old weapons are long wasted away. Your pistols still work perfectly, and you still have your fusion gun (though the batteries are very weak, after so much time), but most of your other stuff is broken, lacks ammo or requires alterations. Your napalm unit is converted into a makeshift jetpack.

You leave your ship through an airlock and go over to the Marathon. Everything's gray, and there's this "thumping" (the sound of your air systems). It looks dead creepy.

When you get to the Marathon and find an entry point, the ominous factor turns up even more. You walk through old corridors, rusted over. Weird, incomprehensible and rather scary living "blobs" hang from the ceilings; they don't respond as you destroy them. The corridors are oddly quiet.

You go through places you saw, chronologically, a hundred years before. You find the first terminal in the original game, where Leela made her red alert. You can't access it anymore. The entry door you started at has some random stuff behind it. The layout's the same, but things have definitively changed.

The effect was scary, and I was inspired by that idea -- looking back at something long after -- for an EV plugin.

A "return to the EV universe".

There'd be some missions on the Nova side, possibly Kontik probe, and you'd find a way to access some new systems...and then you'd step into the past.

You'd enter through and find these old systems, named identically to EV. But they'd be uninhabited, or some such. Ideally lots of ruins. It would become obvious after a short time that something very wrong went on there.

I think I had the idea that the aliens came back and killed almost everyone; if not that, then presumably some terrible intra-human war. At any rate, there'd ideally be a few alien ships, and a lot of automated "battleships", made long ago. Sometimes still fighting it out, almost all willing to attack you, as a foreign intruder into their space.

You'd meet enemies around every corner, and the galaxy would be in such a horrible state of disrepair. You'd be able to pick up some ancient ships there, like Corvettes and Kestrels and Confed Cruisers, though their effectiveness would probably be blunted with time. Possibly also more recent ships, made during the wars after EV.

There'd still be a handful of humans, but they'd be xenophobic and resistant to your arrival. Their automated defenses would attempt to destroy you at all costs anyway, so it's not likely you could land on the planet to start with.

Your idea here sounds really familiar to that -- and so I think it's a good idea. If done right, it'd be very atmospheric. Spooky, maybe a bit sad.

If you're inclined to try it at some point, go for it.

- Bob

@shlimazel, on Feb 4 2008, 12:20 PM, said in After Nova:

Hey, cool idea! I'd help with it. I could do some ships, maybe.

If I do do this, most of the work would be modifying Nova's existing ships to make them look like they haven't had maintenance in a century or so, making others look run down, and creating various space creatures. There'd be very few new ships, the the new ones would likely be combinations of old ones.

@archon, on Feb 4 2008, 12:40 PM, said in After Nova:

Was it called "Life Without Us" by any chance? A book by that name came out recently.

Maybe. I can't remember the title. If anyone else was watching the History Channel Saturday.

@zilla, on Feb 4 2008, 01:00 PM, said in After Nova:

Know what would be better? If this was based on the Novaverse after Humanity moved beyond the veil. It could be about the race of beings that stumble across the smoldering and decrepit remnants of the human civilization of the past.

Nah, by the time another species reached space-faring age, most of the traces of humanity would be gone, at least 99% or more. And there's no indication of sentient aliens beyond Humans and Wraith in Nova.

@dr--trowel, on Feb 4 2008, 02:10 PM, said in After Nova:

Nice, Josh! What you're proposing is at least as drastic as kicking civilization back to the period after 670 NC, when the Artemis terrorists blew the gate system (see Nova Preamble 1).

There's a period of collapse of interstellar government in the Traveller timeline, called The Long Night. I always thought that was a great name for it.

Heh, I'm outdoing Artemis! Someone stop me before complete genocide commences! :laugh:

Interesting name as well. Though I'll worry about naming it after I finish worrying about whether I'm even going to do it. Though I did catch myself gutting copies of the Nova Files to remove all the resources that wouldn't be used. I had thought venting it would have gotten it off my mind. It didn't. I'll give myself a few days to think it over before I make a final decision.

Edit: Bob posted while I was typing.

Nice idea, even if Nova and EVC aren't related. Yeah, I think the overall atmosphere would play a big role in this plug. Just imagine landing on a planet you really liked, only to find it in ruins.

Speaking of the atmosphere, random things in the interface just came to mind. Like modifying Nova's current interfaces to make them look worn and decrepit, adding cracks to the glass in the main menu screen, things like that.

This post has been edited by JoshTigerheart : 04 February 2008 - 03:30 PM

Guys, it's Armetis, not Artemis. How many times must one say it?

I was tickled to read this. I've spent a few posts and two dozen hours trying to flesh out some ways to make this 'degenerating universe' seem realistic. My TC concept was to happen after mankind in another universe (Dan Simmon's Hyperion, actually) suffered a widespread calamity that effectively isolated a small group of planets from the rest of the universe. Most of the universe was linked by hypergates, and without them, the remainder of the population has to rely on old-fashioned jump drives that have limited range, forcing the few billion souls left to live in a sort of island in a vast void of space. The player is/was supposed to earn his/her bread and butter by scavenging from old derelicts drifting through the deep space on the edge of "The Pocket".

I had a few ideas that would add some end-game excitement or big-picture plot developments, mostly hinging upon the player's curiosity about what happened, why, and if there were any humans outside of the pocket. Some plot devices might be a single semi-working hypergate that needs various missions and parts collected to make it work, and then a final mission to have the player jump through and see what is on the other side. Of course, the player could also contribute the decline of the rest of humanity by simply being one of the raider/pirate types helping to speed up entropy by destroying and pillaging.

As far as ships, I think the best visual effect would be to have many variations of ships, nearly all with the aforementioned rust, repairs, and wear&tear of being around in such a cruddy place. However, I think something particularly unique to this kind of TC would be having many ships as conglomerations of others, almost to the point of taking the front of one ship and tacking it on the rear of another. The idea would be that these people would be needy and clever, and would make working ships out of non-working ones, even if they looked silly and wouldn't perform all that well. This effect could be a resource hog, and I figured on 60+ ship models needed for my TC to even be roughly 50% complete with ships. That isn't too much, I suppose, and many of them could be similar base models with just some texturing changes or slight mesh deformations/additions.

I imagined that old weapons would be fairly rare, and finding a cache of old IR or radar missiles would be quite a find. The kinds of missiles built in the post-calamity universe were much less effective and of shoddy construction. Many ships made rudimentary weapons out of old machinery, highly inaccurate and slow-firing, but still useful for taking out weakly-shielded and poorly-maintained enemy craft.

So, long story short, I'd be interested in sharing my work with you if you want to try fleshing out your ideas more in EVN.

Werhner

@joshtigerheart, on Feb 4 2008, 02:25 PM, said in After Nova:

Nah, by the time another species reached space-faring age, most of the traces of humanity would be gone, at least 99% or more. And there's no indication of sentient aliens beyond Humans and Wraith in Nova.

Knup-Knups! The Knup-Knups would replace us all!

@joshtigerheart, on Feb 4 2008, 12:25 PM, said in After Nova:

If I do do this, most of the work would be modifying Nova's existing ships to make them look like they haven't had maintenance in a century or so, making others look run down, and creating various space creatures. There'd be very few new ships, the the new ones would likely be combinations of old ones.

Well, me and the team would still need experience, and I have poked around with the ship resources... maybe let us do the ship jobs/descriptions.

But the idea is great. Anyhow, your ideas would be great... how about also making the pictures and whatnot look all broken?

And if that would be possible, don't forget to make the target pictures fuzzy, as if your radar or whatever tracks your targets is having problems and can't get a good grip on your target. There should probably also be some marauders or something who really need supplies to keep living.

However, if weapons are hard to find, they should be slightly weaker than what they are in present Nova, and the shields and armor on all ships would have to be much worse than the ships from present Nova.

Two 'the's? Please use good grammar, please!

It was called "Life After Humans," I believe (yes, I watch a lot of History Channel; seems like the only good shows on these days can be found there).

But this sounds like a VERY intriguing plug (TC? Expansion?), Josh. It makes me want to see this.

@werhner, on Feb 4 2008, 02:56 PM, said in After Nova:

<snip>

Yeah, I remember reading that idea. It was pretty good. Of course, assuming I still have interest in this in a few days, conditions would be greatly different from yours. The Novaverse in After Nova (that's tentative, by the way) would already be degenerated by about 300 years. And because the killer is some uber-disease, there's lots of spaceships just floating around. Vacuumn doesn't deteriorate things very quickly, so they'd still be there at the time of this partial conversion, though most of them have nothing left of value. Novaverse ships would be the main ones around still since many of those that are used would have been towed to port and repaired, though very few would have been built since then due to lack of capabilities. And most of the ships would be smaller ones (I'm debating if there'd still be flyable Leviathans), since bigger ones would be harder to maintain. Conversely, since they'd take longer to fall apart, you'd see more Levis drifting around than Vipers.

Mostly smaller weapons and outfits would be purchasable. Turrets would be rare, due to being broken down for use as cannons. A QLBT would be a very rare find. I'm thinking the only secondaries that'd have buyable ammo would be Steller Grenades, Raven Rockets, and IR Missiles, but they'd be pricey due to rarity. Everything else you'd have to forage. And you could pull outfits from ships, but you'd have to go to port to get them installed.

But the same basic concepts are similar. If I do undertake this, I'd love to see your work.

@king_of_manticores, on Feb 4 2008, 06:45 PM, said in After Nova:

<snip>

I can handle descs. Writing is my strong point. There's a reason why I have my WIP novel link in my siggy. :laugh:

Yeah, interfaces and stuff would look much more rundown. I might break out GIMP again and see if I can modify them. I know I could with Photoshop, but I don't have that. <_<

Shields and armor will likely be weaker, except for those feral Polaris ships. You're not going to want to mess with them.

@warlord-mike, on Feb 4 2008, 07:21 PM, said in After Nova:

It was called "Life After Humans," I believe (yes, I watch a lot of History Channel; seems like the only good shows on these days can be found there).

But this sounds like a VERY intriguing plug (TC? Expansion?), Josh. It makes me want to see this.

Yeah, it had to be called that. Thanks.

Oh, apparently just venting didn't work. I had to see it in practice. So I found myself modifying the Trishka system, those in its cluster, Tichel, and Kania, complete with civvie and Fed derelicts, an occasional feral Manta in Kania, uninhabited worlds (save Misfire), and altered descriptions mentioning what happened to them.

@joshtigerheart, on Feb 4 2008, 08:55 PM, said in After Nova:

<snip>

Will David R. and his Terraforming Team have terraformed UPC-whatever it was into Nirvana during this? Debris field should also make a comeback. The only music in a destroyed universe should be terrible stuff played by a bootleg band. Oh yes, and that Rigel planet next to Neo New York seems like it would be quite the safehaven for people escaping the radiaton, viruses, everything, because of the federation facilities on the planet.

Thus far, from the random systems I edited just to see how it'd look and work in-game on a basic level, Nirvana was terraformed a few months before the epidemic and the population was quickly wiped out. Misfire, just to the south, has been planning on resettling it once they have the supplies and capabilities, but that doesn't look like it'll happen anytime soon. Rigel III is depopulated, along with Dunroamin, Kerensky, Spacedock VI, Eurpoa, Mars, Viking, Spacedock II (which has crashed into Viking), Port Kane, Trusa, and Earth. The only two inhabited spobs are presently Sirrusa and Misfire. Of course, there will be more if I do this, I only modified a few systems to satisfy my need to see it in-game.

Edit: Even if the Debris Field survived both the Federation legal system AND the epidemic, it's still been a couple hundred years since then, so one way or another they'd be dead by then. Plus, the couple of million survivors of the human race wouldn't be very concerned with art and music.

This post has been edited by JoshTigerheart : 04 February 2008 - 11:11 PM

Since Override was always my favorite EV 'verse, this thread made me imagine what a similar storyline there might look like.

I'm thinking the player could be an Emalgha who spaces one day only to find nearby space completely deserted----both the Voinians and the Humans mysteriously gone.

I haven't gotten further than that yet.

@joshtigerheart, on Feb 4 2008, 11:07 PM, said in After Nova:

Edit: Even if the Debris Field survived both the Federation legal system AND the epidemic, it's still been a couple hundred years since then, so one way or another they'd be dead by then. Plus, the couple of million survivors of the human race wouldn't be very concerned with art and music.

Ah, but there could be a spare robot Debris Field that might still be operational!

@lindley, on Feb 4 2008, 08:57 PM, said in After Nova:

Since Override was always my favorite EV 'verse, this thread made me imagine what a similar storyline there might look like.

I'm thinking the player could be an Emalgha who spaces one day only to find nearby space completely deserted----both the Voinians and the Humans mysteriously gone.

I haven't gotten further than that yet.

I personally also prefer Override.

However, this topic does seem of some interest to me.

A good movie for you to watch would be "Children of Men". It is about the Earth with no more children being born.

Personally, I am more interested in the idea of the epidemic, the fear of it as it spreads, the attempt of people to get away, etc...

I think 300 years after, might be interesting, but then again, you could make many interesting missions, and not change anything in game if you made it right after the Vellos or Polaris went beyond the veil. Or just take off one of the other storylines and have the character thrown into the middle of a dying universe in which they are trapped. I like this idea.

Werhner, had an idea similar to this and I responded in his topic. I think this would be a good way of making an easier TC or Expansion to EV: Nova while still adding fresh content and changing the players focus from uber ships, to staying alive. Making the whole thing strict play (the player can make a wrong move and die from the virus at anytime, sometimes by dumb bad luck) would also make it more challenging and thought provoking.

There are a lot of ways you could take this concept.

This post has been edited by Swithich : 05 February 2008 - 12:44 AM

Some nice ideas. Watching everything crumble around you would be interesting, which is something I could do as a related plug-in at some point. Though I do very much like the "300 years later" thing as well, especially since such stories usually either put you right when it is happening or when humanity has significantly recovered and is a force to be reckoned with once more. You never quite see the in-between stage, humanity struggling to recover from being all but wiped out completely, unless it's trying to beat back some alien race, but that's besides the point.

The in-game story I haven't worked out, so there's lots I could still do. Some ideas involve flying deep into the feral Polaris ships' nest to retrieve something, new breakouts of mutant strains of the disease (which is, in the descs I wrote, refered to as the Extinction Virus, the term virus being a misnomer as the culprit is actually bacteria. Blame the Fed media.), mysterious spectral Vell-os ships appearing and attacking scavengers, even though the Vell-os already went beyond the veil, fighting off marauders (of course), and and perhaps finding and securing vital supplies to save a settlement.

Bah, you people make me sound like I've committed to this! At this rate, you're going to make me commit! :laugh: