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Since this is an SF game, advanced communications are reasonable, as opposed to a Swords and Sorcery type game where they are not. Players will be able to communciate with anyone at pretty much anytime.
Person to Person, as well as a wide variety of group Channels all the way up to Galactic which is open to everyone. Some sort of VR style is possible as well.
Each Colony, and potentiall each Ship, is a major Storyline center all it's own. The people who own and live at a particular Colony will mostly be concerned with events on their Planet.
But in the end this is really Role Playing Lite. Some encoragement in the beginning to create a Character with some defining personal traits, and then just the simple suspension of disbelief that this is not a game. Anyone can do it, but those with real roleplaying skills have a vast canvas to draw upon.
Each player owns a Personal Shuttlecraft that can make runs between fully mapped locations in a very short time. These craft can be upgraded but will always be quite small when compared to actual Ships. Shuttles can deliver you to a Spaceport or anywhere on a known Planet. You can also use these craft to join a Ship out in Space, however the Captain of the ship must be willing to slow down quite a bit for 10-15 minutes as you make your approach and dock.
The number of Stars and Planets are fixed at a very large number to ensure exploration will take a very, very long time. What is generated on the fly is the map of the Planet and the details that go along with that, like creature population. I want to build a fairly accurate, but fictional, version of our Galaxy and that means a lot of precalculations for orbits and positions that the game can then use.
I picked the 100,000 number by considering the state of technology today and what can be handled easily by Mud code. Overall Ship speeds are being designed with the idea that going from the center of the Galaxy to the edge should take about 6 months or so. Getting back is considerably faster.
A.T
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