# Citadel Sector XIV - General gameplay outline

After many years of the remake curse striking the SS13 community time and time again, there's finally a shining beacon amongst the vast sea of litter and wreckage. SS14 is currently in a state where it's viable to build long-term server projects with confidence that they'll last. And with it, Citadel can now truly enter a new era.

Over the years, Citadel has built up a lot of ambitious ideas that had to be deprioritized, toned down, or scrapped entirely, due to a combination of SS13's tech debt, and BYOND's bizarre quirks and limitations. Due to RobustToolbox and SS14 being built in, well, a fairly robust manner, these previously unrealized ideas are now fully possible. The only true limit with SS14 is the server's hardware, and the patience of contributors who choose to get involved.

This document lays out the foundational design concepts and goals for Citadel's upcoming SS14 server, Citadel Sector XIV. The primary goal is to provide an engaging PvE experience with a heavy focus on ship gameplay, while giving players the freedom and customization options to thoroughly express themselves. The majority of, or perhaps even all, features outlined in this document will be present for the server's official launch. The goal is to make sure that Citadel Sector XIV kicks off with a *bang.* Out of the gate, it should be a compelling enough experience that it even attracts those outside the server's primary target audience, as that's a big part of what made Main as popular as it was back in the day.

This design doc only outlines major aspects that define the core foundation of the intended experience, with the intention of details being filled out as development progresses, and for completely unmentioned aspects to be developed with complete creative freedom.

An additional underlying design goal is to alleviate the most prominent issue that's plagued Citadel throughout it's lifespan: the lack of distinct identity and direction. To better achieve this, certain unique features might be kept within a separate closed-source assembly exclusive to the server (SS14 makes that incredibly easy to do!). The public repo is guaranteed to feature everything to do with customization, and everything to do with ships themselves. This will allow Citadel's public SS14 fork to act as a solid foundation for furry-centric and ship-focused forks (with both being optional!), whilst encouraging downstreams to forge their own distinct identity and direction (Because let's face it, furry SS13 servers often don't differ much between eachother gameplay-wise nowadays, and attempts to stand out are largely fruitless due to the nature of the AGPL license. This is a step to help change that).

``[NOTE: This document is currently considered a draft. Information may be changed at any point in time, and some sections may be cut entirely.]``

## Character customization

Of course, Citadel being a predominantly furry community, character customization is quite integral to the player's experience. The work of achieving baseline player expectations is already cut out for us, though: SS14 is already incredibly close to feature parity with Virgo's baseline customization. In fact, Virgo's (and by extension, Citadel RP's) marking sprites are already compatible with SS14's marking system right out of the box, with the only necessary work being to punch in the data for those markings (which could potentially be automated).

Due to the server focusing heavily on PvE, and gameplay being centered around ships, gameplay balance in character generation matters significantly less than it does for SS13. However, to keep things fairly sane, every character option that affects gameplay, with the exception of mechanical species, will have a point cost assigned to it proportional to its gameplay benefit, in a way that expands upon the ideas of Main's character trait system. All gameplay-affecting options will be kept in separate UI tabs from options that are strictly visual/flavor. Additionally, the foundation of character generation will be brought up to complete feature parity with that of Virgo/CitRP's.

Vocal barks will be making a return from Main, and will work more or less the same. This will replace SS14's pre-existing speech sound system. Additionally, if DSP can be figured out (the engine's open source, after all!), then barks will be audible over radios, with an appropriate static-y radio filter to distinguish them from local speech.

The main goal with character generation is to achieve parity with Citadel RP's customization at minimum. However, it's possible that character generation may potentially be expanded, as SS14's relative lack of tech debt, combined with the relative freedom of the engine, and the reduced importance of character balance, makes it possible for many previously unrealized ideas to be a potential reality.

## *The* Citadel Station

The bulk of the gameplay loop will be centering around a central landmark, a capitol station; *the* Citadel Station. This will be where all players spawn by default. It'll feature several vast hangars for ships to spawn in and dock at, a sizeable bar for captains to seek crew and for visitors to hang out, a generous amount of dorm rooms for "resting", an autonomous cargo bay for stocking up on assorted goods, and more! The Citadel Station may or may not be a thinly-veiled space brothel, though rumors of such cannot be concretely confirmed nor denied.

The station and all of it's functions will be fully capable of operating completely autonomously. Security in particular will be it's strongest suit, with ship entry into hangars requiring that pilots follow strict docking procedures, and in-station security fixtures being swift to pacify (or failing that, neutralize) any detected active threats. The bar, cargo, medical, and ship docks, will all be staffed by AI-controlled drones capable of autonomously performing unattended tasks, though the drones will be notably slower and less efficient than a player-controlled counterpart. This will make it fairly straight-forward for a captain to dock, tell a drone to repair, call a cargo drone to order replacement parts that the maintenance drone will automatically mount, and while all that's happening, spend some time socializing in the bar alongside their ship's crew to try to recruit more members, and pick up a cloned crew member who was instructed to stay after being lost during the previous trip.

Any player can opt to clock in at any service-oriented department of their choice (Bartending, janitorial, medical, cargo, and maintenance). Upon doing so, they'll receive a pair of HUD glasses that shows them the current planned actions of drones, and a device that allows reserving a single object that would otherwise be eligible for drone action (as indicated by the HUD). As the player spends time in a station role, they'll receive a steady stream of thalers. However, if the player is deemed inactive (in that they haven't reserved any objects in a while), then those gains will be paused until they're active again.

Logistics is important for the Citadel Station to run smoothly, though. Everything from cargo will need materials in stock in order to be produced, and while the station will receive hourly shipments of various materials, a high enough demand from captains, or the automated cargo ships being intercepted (They're defenseless! Their cheap FTL drives will have them warp in at completely random locations every time, for better or worse), can lead to a drought in materials. Captains attempting to order something that's out-of-stock can choose to either order an expedited personal delivery at a steep premium, or queue their order to be automatically fulfilled once the next shipment's received (with an estimation of when that will be, along with showing the volume of required materials currently reserved in queue). If the ship contract associated with a queued order ends by any means, then the queued order simply gets cancelled.

Players can help with the station's cargo supply by selling off low-tier loot, scrap, old parts, ores, and anything else that can be broken down into raw materials. The station's cargo bay won't buy objects that're unable to be broken into raw materials, or otherwise can't contribute to the station's material pool. When the server's more populated, this will allow automated shipments to take a back seat, as players can organically provide the station with resources by returning from any trip that has procured any form of undesired loot.

## Ship Contracts (Round Progression)

This is the backbone of the gameplay loop. Ships will be obtained primarily through contracts. Every stock ship variant available at the Citadel Station has a static contract tied to it that influences the gigs that will be available to the captain, and controls the general gameplay progression of that ship. Character slots start off with a small selection of ships available to them, with those ships being predominantly smaller, simple ships, designed for beginners and small crews. By completing contracts, the captain and registered crew gain persistent progress towards permanently unlocking ships on a player account level, with hands-on experience with specialized tasks during a contract granting that individual player more progress towards unlocking ships that specialize in that task. The player who starts the contract will be automatically assigned captain of the selected ship, and the ship will immediately spawn in an available docking space in one of the hangars (though if there's no space, it'll be queued). Additionally, contracts will cost a chunk of thalers to start, with the option of spending more to customize the ship's starting loadout (ranging from weapon swaps to full-blown room replacements), and spending more to increase the baseline difficulty of incoming gigs (which will also increase the cap for persistent progress).

Most contracts will have at least one condition that has to be met in order to be turned in (This will despawn the contract's associated ship, and the ship must be docked at the Citadel in order for a contract to be turned in). In most cases, this will be a minimum quota of some variety, usually in the form of gig completion. Contracts can be cancelled by the captain at any time, which will prompt a dismantling squad (consisting of security drones, dismantling drones, and cargo drones) to arrive and dismantle the ship (or whatever remains of it) completely. Additionally, if a contract is cancelled before the quota's met, the captain will lose a small amount of progression towards new ships. A contract's registered crew won't suffer any penalties if a contract is cancelled, though the ferocity of the dismantling squad might result in abandoned crew waking up in the Citadel's cloning bay if the captain wasn't careful.

Every contract will have a cap on all forms of persistent progress that can be gained through them, and once all major caps are reached, gigs will no longer be available, and new crew can no longer join the contract. Essentially, contracts will replace the traditional concept of rounds and round progression, with a definitive end point where a ship would be expected to have exhausted all content available to it. Each ship will essentially be it's own semi-self-contained round. The server itself will restart once every 24 hours (with the exception of cases where a restart is urgently required). Neither contracts nor their associated ships will persist through restarts, and as such, players will be given a timely heads up prior to the restart in order to turn in their contracts (otherwise they'll be treated as cancelled).

The expected average time it'll take to fully exhaust a contract will also vary between ships, correlated mostly with size. The smallest ships will feature contracts designed to take no more than an hour to fully exhaust, while the largest ships might take several hours instead. This will give captains of larger ships a good reason to be proactive in seeking crew, as the potentially longer contracts, combined with larger crew sizes, means it's strongly likely that crew members might end up retiring during the duration of a contract.

Players who aren't actively registered in a crew contract are free to browse contracts with open crew registration enabled, through a list on their PDA. This list displays everything important about a contract, such as the ship, the recommended and current crew count, the amount of time the contract's been active, the current progress of the contract, the captain's expected discipline (essentially describing the captain's desired level of roleplay), a brief description written by the captain, and how far away the ship is from the station. Captains can also invite players to their contract, which will show in it's own separate list with all the same info. Players can be a part of multiple contracts simultaneously (Such that a captain of a support ship can tag along for a larger vessel's gigs while receiving the same rewards as crewmates do, for instance), but only if they're explictly invited (Otherwise, joining open contracts without doing anything becomes a straight-forward farming method). Upon joining a contract, the player will receive baseline access to the associated ship, and the captain can assign further access if the ship allows it.

Crew members are free to leave a contract at any time. This carries no penalty, and they'll still receive relevant rewards once the contract's completed (even if they log off!), but since they'll lose ship access by leaving, they may have to be escorted out of the ship if they're on-board at the time, unless the ship features some way out in that instance, such as public-access personal shuttle docks. Crew members can be forced to leave by the captain, but this will be treated the same as the crew member leaving normally. The captain cannot leave the contract, but is allowed to transfer captainhood to another crew member, so long as the crew member accepts, and meets the conditions to access the ship contract through normal means.

Additionally, contracts come with an allowance of company scrip tied directly to the contract. The initial allowance is proportional to the ship's size and complexity, and is the only currency that the Citadel Station's cargo bay accepts for purchases. Further scrip is obtained through completing gigs, allowing purchase of higher-tier parts directly at the Citadel. AI-controlled merchants outside of the Citadel are not guaranteed to accept scrip, but poor conversion rates will make scrip fairly undesirable to trade with outside of the Citadel. By default, a ship's captain is the only one who can make transactions with scrip, but the captain can appoint any crew member as a treasurer, granting them access to the contract's balance. Scrip cannot be transferred between contracts, and lacks a physical form (This is mainly to limit the potential effect that player trading can have on progression).

When a contract is completed or cancelled, and it meets the condition to be turned in, all characters who participated in the contract will receive a payout of thalers, proportional to the amount of time they've spent in the crew, determined by the presence of individual crew members during every major event, such as scrip being earned, and objectives being failed/completed (if all crew members were present and registered throughout the entire contract, then the payout is equally split amongst all of them, including the captain). The pool available for thaler payouts is determined by the contract's final scrip balance, plus all scrip spent at the Citadel, plus (if the contract was completed successfully) the resulting appraised value of the ship (minus the ship's base appraisal value. If the crew stripped or otherwise downgraded the ship, then this part of the payout will be a penalty), with all of those being individually capped depending on the ship's size and complexity.

## Gigs

This is the meat of the gameplay loop. While a contract's ship is docked at the Citadel, the captain (and crewmembers who've been given permission to do so) is allowed to browse a small list of procedurally-generated gigs, all presented by various factions. Rewards vary between gigs, with all gigs featuring a scrip reward, and some offering bonus rewards on top (Such as new ship parts, for instance). Entities related to a gig are only guaranteed to be present in the game world once the gig has been started. Only one gig can be active at a given time for a contract. Gigs can be cancelled at the cost of scrip (capping out at a contract's total remaining scrip). Additionally, some gigs are time-sensitive (with the possibility of those time-sensitive gigs being related to the active gigs of other crews), and are capable of expiring.

Gigs are assignments that require the successful completion of one or several objectives. The content and difficulty depends on the ship's specializations (if any), size, and complexity. For instance, a small, simple freighter will primarily receive gigs for hauling cargo between distant outposts, while a large, experimental warship will be primarily dealing with gigs that focus on taking out high-value targets and clearing large swarms of enemies. However, gigs are not exclusive to ship classes, so it'll be entirely possible for a science vessel to take on combat gigs, and for a fighter to take on mining gigs. Additionally, the reward for a gig depends entirely on the size and complexity of the ship, with the payout not innately accounting for any potential complications to do with a gig (let's face it, if someone sent a bid to have a cargo ferry deal with their space monsters, they probably didn't even pay attention to what kinda contract they were bidding on!). Additionally, the more gigs completed during a contract, the higher the bids, and the higher the difficulty, with later stages scaling with the expectation that the ship's been upgraded to deal with what the game has to throw at it.

Whenever an objective in a gig is completed or failed outright, all crewmembers, including the captain, are immediately notified through their PDA (with failures detailing the reason why, and the gig consequently being counted as cancelled if the objective isn't optional).

Upon completing all of a gig's required objectives, the contract's ship must be docked at the Citadel in order to turn in the gig. Essentially, the hangar serves as a bookend for every gig, which makes it convenient for crewmembers to head into the Citadel to take a break (both ingame and IRL) before the next gig, and allows for a good stopping point for captains who'd like to finish their contract. This also has the positive of alleviating player fatigue by making a guarantee of at least some downtime between moments of action, which has the bonus of improving player retention.

## Thalers

This is the carrot-on-a-stick. Thalers, Citadel Sector XIV's personal currency, are nice to have, but they hurt to lose. Every character slot has it's own balance of persistent thalers, and starts off with enough thalers to start a ship contract for any ship that brand new characters are eligible for. As the Citadel's cargo bay does not accept thalers, the primary active purposes of thalers include starting ship contracts, and trading with outside merchants. Thalers can be gained by working at the station, selling to merchants who offer thalers, and receiving payouts from contracts once they end.

However, thalers come with some restrictions. Merchants who accept thalers will be rare to come by, with those merchants rarely offering anything other than personal gear and smaller ship parts. Things purchased with thalers aren't innately persistent, and objects relevant to contract progression and ship upgrading (with the exception of parts designed for smaller ships) will be forbidden outright from being bought with thalers. Additionally, in order for thalers to be used outside of the Citadel, it must be converted into a physical form (either for free at the Citadel, or for a fee at trading ships and outposts) by withdrawing it from the character's balance. Once thalers are withdrawn, they cannot be deposited back in. These restrictions are primarily in place to ensure there's very limited long-term incentive in harassing other players for their thalers (as there's no way to transfer balance from one character to another), and to limit the potential negative impact that thaler inflation can have on game balance.

Thalers will be subject to a variety of sinks, with cloning at the Citadel costing a fee equal to a static percentage of your character's balance, ship contracts having an upfront cost with optional extras that add to the cost, personal shuttles requiring a fee proportional to it's appraised value in order to spawn, the open contract list allowing captains to bid for the top-most spot (with all paid-advertised entries receiving a highlight!), and more. As a result of this, captain mains (especially captains who prefer bigger ships!) have to worry the most about thalers, and as a result, characters who primarily exist as captains have a direct incentive to prioritize profit over all else, as failing to make a return of investment on a higher-value ship contract can potentially lead to the captain having to either work, or settle with a smaller ship, until they're no longer suffering the temporary embarassment of space bankruptcy

Meanwhile, those who primarily play as crew are naturally bound to end up with a generous stockpile. While the server launch won't feature many notable thaler sinks geared towards crew members, there will still be a handful of major uses for them. Notably, parts suitable for use on personal shuttles will be obtained primarily through merchants who accept thalers, and the lack of persistence for character gear makes a good argument for captains to regularly consider letting their crew shop at thaler merchants.

## Personal Shuttles

The closest thing to fast travel that'll be available. Personal shuttles are small vessels designed for ferrying a small number of passengers over modest distances. They come standard with two internally-mounted engines, a shared fuel tank, four passenger seats, a pilot seat and console, two external airlocks, an autopilot computer, a weak solar panel providing power, and an uncomfortably cramped interior. These shuttles are much too small and low-powered to mount weaponry to without considerable sacrifices to functionality, but are easy to modify due to their simplicity. Personal shuttles can be called at any time through the PDA at a thaler cost equal to the shuttle's total appraised value, plus fuel costs, though the player will be warned in advance if their position is too far away for the shuttle to complete a round-trip with it's equipped fuel tank. The shuttle's autopilot will be used to navigate to the character's location from the Citadel, and the character will be notified if the shuttle has docked somewhere, if the shuttle suffers damage, or if the shuttle has gotten the closest it's able to get to the character.

Personal shuttles are also persistent, being tied to each character slot. Whenever a personal shuttle is successfully placed into the Citadel's shuttle storage (which will effectively despawn it), the player is given the option to save the shuttle to their character slot. Only autopilots are permitted to dock within shuttle storage, and this can be initiated while the shuttle is docked at the Citadel while no sentient entities are on-board. Items, fuel, mobs, and weapons will be excluded from persisting within a personal shuttle, and the shuttle must be meet a set of requirements in order to be stored in shuttle storage (the shuttle needs an autopilot, needs to be theoretically functional, and has to fit within the boundaries of shuttle storage). Character slots only have one personal shuttle each, and as such, players will be allowed to reset their character's personal shuttle for a fee, or opt for a default personal shuttle at that same fee when ordering their personal shuttle. If a character's personal shuttle is destroyed, abandoned, or the player chooses not to save it, then the saved personal shuttle will remain completely unaffected.

Personal shuttles can essentially act as a long-term personal project for individual players. Players are free to do more or less whatever they please with them, such as upgrade them, jerry-rig them into support vessels, strip them for the sake of cheaper emergency transport, and more.

## The Whole Wide Space

This is the part where creative liberty is allowed to get incredibly wild. Every time the server restarts, space will be generated randomly from scratch, with the only constant being the Citadel Station, located at the center of the map. Asteroids, ruins, outposts, and more, will dynamically generate as players fly about the map, with these features despawning when no player has come near them within the past hour (allowing new landmarks to take their place once another explorer comes by). This gives a strong purpose for exploration vessels, with special machinery allowing players to report landmarks (though it must be a valid landmark) back to Citadel Station, which will mark them on everyone's sector map. Explorers are allowed to write a short description alongside their markers, and markers will automatically disappear when their associated landmark despawns.

Gigs may spawn landmarks, or reserve existing landmarks, depending on their needs, and the whims of the random number generator. This will be marked on the crew's sector map, and the landmark will be prevented from respawning while at least one gig has it reserved.

Players may also come across NPC-controlled ships, with ships being increasingly more likely to be hostile towards Nanotrasen the further away they are from the Citadel. These can be hailed and interacted with through any console with access to a ship's communication arrays. Communications with NPC-controlled ships will be done exclusively through pre-determined messages. Player-controlled ships, on the other hand, can be communicated with directly through text. Merchant ships can be requested to dock, fighters can be hired if you have enough resources to tempt them, cargo ships can offer to pay you for protection, and more! It's also possible to communicate with outposts, though this is useful primarily for determining what traders accept and offer, and getting hints regarding gigs that require investigation.

## TL;DR

space is neat :>