# Frontier Dystopia's core design

Space Station 13 is a powerful tool for creating stories trought RP, however it requires proper enviroment, world and setting to do so, in the grand scheme of things this is what we hope and strive to achieve here.

## **The Premise**
> In the frontier lies a twisted world promising technological advancements and plenty of resources, prosperity and wealth. Many have come before and less have come back to tell the story, those who did not come back left to the wastes of the infamous "La Mancha" sector.
> NanoTrasen, after achieving a contract by the "Solar Interstellar Government" (or known as SIG or, more colloquially SolGov't) to build and operate a jack of all trades kind of station, with a focus on research and mining; with hopes to conquer this frontier from their rivals and the horrors that call it home.
>
> **The frontier** - The station has been built here with a purpose to lay claim, gain profit and commit to advanced research. It's crew has a job to do and a quota to fullfill from the many tasks it has been given.
> The sector is not empty and devoid of life, many lives and thrive in the cracks of the La Mancha sector, threats known and unknown prepare to strike the station at any given time.
> The finest NanoTrasen prospectors shall go forth onto the world be the station and the corporation's hand to lay waste on our rivals and the native horrors who dare reside on it's soil.
> The crew is tasked with collecting resources of value and capture research opportunities. However the planet the station orbits and it's moon are filled with twisted and unnatura horrors seen nowhere else, but are the normality in this sector.
>
> **Dystopia** - The station is staffed by various kind of people, from the adventurous, to the opportunistic and the ambitious, and even the desperate or those who are just tying to survine in an extremely strong and competitive capitalist setting and culture.
> Even the best of the best are nothing more than moraly ambiguous, as anyone should not expect that just our enemies have selfish desires. There is no proof that a station with no enemies in sight won't have any conflict to arise within itself.
> Let it be conflict caused by corruption, underhanded dealings, black market activities or just plain old low level criminality, it is foolishly optimistic to believe that even the highest ranked would not to take such advantage.
> Although only NT's enemies are danger to the liveleyhood of the station, no one is pure or innocent, no one is above the law simply because "they cant possibly be a threat". **Everyone, even your friends and coworker may have a second purpose to what they do.**

> The Frontier Dystopia seeks to create a enviroment of rough living in a capitalist dystopia, on a frontier station with many dangerous threats and unknowns.
> A place where while the survival and base needs are plenty, the pressure from either the station, the departement or your fellow crewmembers to potentially screw you over can create conflicts from corruption and criminality, a place where noone is truly a saint really.
>
> *imagine if you may...*
>
> *Detroit, if it was an island in the middle of the bermuda triangle, above the mariana's trench, while said island is also a massive graveyard sitting on top of the world's biggest gold's vein.*
>
> ***How far would you go to fulfill your impossible dream?***
>
> ##### *written by HP lovecraft, Philip K. and George Orwell*

## The Non-antagonist gameplay loop theory
This project's core goal is to implement a proper non-antagonist gameplay loop (to the station and crew's personal activities) where even a greenshift is interesting to play in.
While the engagment to the shift antagonists and events may provide, handing an incentive to even non-antagonists would make a solid foundation that, hopefully, will ensure consistant change in the round as the core that drives shifts is consistent.

We theorize that the gameplay incentives of a round can be broken down into 6 base components. across 3 "**station tiers**"
the **intrinsic** (where survival/basilary needs is at it's core) and **extrinsic**( toward any opportunistic chance) necessities, with goals and desires to:
* The station as a whole and all of command.
* Individual departments and their head.
* All crewmembers with their personal needs and aspirations.

To which it can be summed up as the following:

| ///////// | Station-wide | Departement-wide | Personal |
| - | - | - | - |
| **Intrinsic** | Focus on station growth and constant upkeep | Expand the departement capabilities and make it more efficent | Monetary gains and personal stability/independence to any other crewmember |
| **Extrinsic** | Any trade or event that may arise and benefit the station as a whole | Departemental supremacy by either collaboration or strong-arming other departements and use the departement's crew to the departement's best capabilities | Monetary gains by exploiting anyone or anything you may see, your immagination and the rules is the limit |

As various gameplay content is implemented (see below), where it affects the incentives we just mentioned, aswell the interaction between them and various groups of players, diffrent kind of gameplay loops may be formed.

# The VARIOUS components of Frontier Dystopia

## Part 1 /// core - Revisioning of the common core gameplay loop, the beginning of the Frontier Dystopia

*Note: those are in order of relevance, topmost is the most important.*

### **[Project Economica](https://hackmd.io/rVbog3fdRvyU0RLtRI6w_A)** - The core and blood of frontier dystopia.
Economica introduces intrinsic pressures for departments and the station (as a quota that NanoTrasen impose must be met), aswell extrinsic oportunties for crew and departments whilst linking all together via a central economy (the all corrupting desire for money).
**The infinite resource loops are entirely gone.** Departments trade, set prices and purchase goods to maintain themselves and compete or cooperate in the offstation economy and beware the cargo tarrifs.
The crew CRAVE credits embrace or crush corruption and shady backdealings NO ONE IS A SAINT. *DONT PISS OFF YOUR SUPERIOR* or risk to loose your livelihood.
It is not a crime if you didn't get caught but you can always just bribe them no matter what remember that in the end ***THE STATION MUST MEET ITS QUOTA***. *for in the end NT holds all the power*.

* It's the core of Frontier Dystopia, as it makes not only money to have a worth, but also make it so that the users are allowed to expand their array of gimmicks and whatnot (see Part 0 down below).

### **[FEAR AND SERVICE](https://hackmd.io/u2ArepQcT8mMcRIGqaO-Mw)** - Face the future, Build the fear.
Overhauls the mood system and ties it to the service department, implementing a intrinsic pressure for players. Mood can faulters from stressful conditions often caused by events and or station decay, that can be reclaimed with a careful managment of your mental sanity or consumption of various service goods and services... or a more brutal and "chemical" approach.
**Deal with the stresses and despair of a brutal and hellish station. Deal with it's potentially horrible consequences. Eat a legendary cake that cures depression and go into debt over it. Avoid or embrace alcohol and drugs to maintain your spirits up.**
*It is now the service department's purpose to maintain the station's sanity.*
* Needed in order to give the service departments usefull goods and services for economica, altought on it's own it would make service to have an actual purpose.

### **[Material Science](https://hackmd.io/u4NTyPKoRSSE_dydkJuqLQ)** - The materials of the future.
Designed to add depth and increase the variety in loot and items by adding qualities and modifiers. Whilst introducing the material refining industry at cargo. As a bonus it provides the desired features of volume of mats not being everything in the ore silo and manual mats requisition interactions without the removal of the ore silo itself (if you want high quality go talk to cargo).
Of course, this can expanded with crew starting artisan high quality goods trading "industries". Acting as a moneysink for the crew to make a loop of make goods, sell goods.
**Mine quality ore to make fancier tools with fabulous stats and potential for special properties. Redesign and Refine your tools for the trade.**
* Features used to enchance later components, act like a stopgap for future projects and having mining to not mindless mine around (and sell off either high quality materials or bulk low quality materials).

## **Part 2 /// Dipping into the wider world via supercruise**
**Science, engineering and explo modules are deeply interconnected and must be read as 3 parts of a larger whole**

After the economica core that's the previous part, now the focus change to to expand on the station's interaction with the "wider world" science, antags, midrounds ghost roles and so on.
The current idea is the station being more "proactive" in it's interaction and deffence against them, at the cost of the overall threat being higher and more numerous.

The rough idea is to grant the station the power to defend themselves from various threats, proactively and collectively (blocking and preventing threats) at the cost of base threats being greater and more varied. With the looming potential risk of the station being devoured by unspeakable horrors in a vicous spiral of defence system failures and fatalities.

Mixed with the temptation for the station to "fly closer to the sun" increasing external threats for improving their quota output and economy
(featuring also a potential science update?).

Explorers being a vital part of the station maintaing control over the sector, fuffiling orders and defending the station.

#### the quota is the new core of the station's shared goals.
there are explo sci and general quota values that will be avilable. with each round picking a random mix with a set total difficulty.

quotas will be expansive and difficult overarching goals the station will need to work together to reach. and keep up with as rounds drag on and crew join the quotas increase overtime until the endgame where the crew will have time to deposit and leave

### **[Prospectors - offstation module](https://hackmd.io/rG2TsakMQlK0xXSZvFEYig) - the overdue union of the same face of the same coin**

*We gotta overhaul mining and explo anyway, at this point it seems also inevitable that a merge is in order*. This step would make the exploration crew and mining crew to be prospectors, and they are quite important for the station now and their success and failures can affect the station greatly. both economically and horrifically.
Prospectors are now the outreaching hand of the station, collecting ore, fulfilling risky missions and crushing incoming threats. The station ought to support them.

**Lavaland rises the horrors deepen.** Prospectors get stronger. fuffill varied tasks on various terrestrial/meteoric and derelict regions, the crew will keep a close eye and assist remotely whilst supplying the prospectors with a system to send and deliver supplies with a teleporter on cooldown from their shuttle; Just make sure no horrors get back with you.

**Failures MAY result in horrific on-station consequences**, mind the ashwalkers and other threats, but if it feels like to much you can always contract the golems with their new ship, and with enough trading or "persuasion by strenght", to be your auxiliary explo crew.

Additionally ashwalker, golem and other lavaland roles to be overhauled as the offical ghost battleground interacting with miners, and remotely with the station. Bsically the ghost roles for exploration and pvp between 2-3 factions.
* Ashwalkers - the new major exploration threat
* Golems - Neutral exploration role. potentially friendly neutral or hostile to the station
* Prospectors - doing their job really

#### [[chap and spell update - modular magic]](https://hackmd.io/jGy-MvT1Q9uRy8O08vxedg)
overhaul on the limited magic of chap and cultists alike, expands on hostile cult factions ability to interact with the station offstation and interaction with the station shield.
new sci department for researching casting

### **[[SCI UPDATE NAME PENDING]](https://hackmd.io/axPDVvx7SK6jGkOP9xp7sw) - Core objective module**
#### **[[XENOBIO UPDATE NAME PENDING]](https://hackmd.io/Fv2AjaIgQ_qUKYe7hL7zWw) - child of sci update**
Ultimateley, the end goal of any station is to push as hard as possible with research, a science update that unites the station's work. This sci update should affect and interact with ALL departments and the overal station.

will have major interactions with explo
the station's research may stir up the horrors of the world to attack
the pressure to fuffil quotas may lead the station to put themselves at greater risk

### [[Engineering update NAME PENDING]](https://hackmd.io/jK9auhtERWyV8801UsF3nA) - station threats module**
The update that introduces the proactive station interaction with threats.

An update that lets engineering be a bit more proactive in keeping the station safe and working. whilst granting the power to overclock equipment for greater effect. at risk of overexerting the station and putting it at risk
Engineering now wields several systems to proactively supress (midround) threats but the overal threat level has increased.
**while things are quiet the security sytstems calmly draw, their power but as threats rise strain builds up.** Manage the balancing act of maintaining them under pressure if need be OVERCLOCK but beware the fallout.
But if greed strikes if command desires more output to meet quotas and offset the failures of others beware that the systems can be exploited for gain at the cost of greater strain. Good luck on this careful three way balancing act. God forbid the explorers piss off something really bad while they are down there.

### [[events and signal overwatch]](https://hackmd.io/RVmYxjsXRtOr8sP9pdPu0w) -
a special role that manages all things offstation. from the prospectors to the early warning system and station deffenses and the sattelite scanner

## ~~**Part 3 /// In depth wider world**~~
~~Would like to dig deeper into the world of Space Station 13. Let players immerse themselves in, and provide a wider world that acts and reacts to the station. The wider world is not a place the crew can go, but causes and effects of all sorts of factions and groups that affect and are affected by the station.~~

### Part 3 is in pending pondering, we still seeking exactly what we want.

But hey I (Pigeon) am working REALLY hard on a proper lore!

## **Part 4 /// Antagonist reworks** - To go from "haha traitor go boom" into something that fits the newly established system better
(Prior to observing how avarage shifts post frontier dystopia implementation go. It is far to vauge to try and design an antag update that fits with it)

Best we got is antags becoming more open ended. further agrovating the chaos of a shift.

### Part 4 is also in pending pondering, we still seeking exactly what we want.

## [**part 0 / Necessary change of rules**]
Frontier dystopia tries to create a enviroment where everyone could be selfish and a bit more chaotic even even if they aren't an antagonist.

A state where, yes the crew arent dyhard loyalists to NanoTrasen, in fact that's up to the crew who wishes to uphold command and who wishes to commit crime for their personal goals.

The goal remains to maintain IC character and do things that make sense IC-wise. It's just crew are a bit more varied in how much they are willing to commit to NanoTrasen. But the threat of punishment will keep them in check, so business as usual, but with more liberty when it comes to personal wellbeing.

Economica does indeed introduce mechanical insentives and risks/punishments of being loyal or trying crime that will hopefully keep things form instantly descending into the purge.

Players will still be required to have a proper IC justification and conduit for their actionsm, there's just now a well defined list of what that is and some of them allow some degree of illicit actions. That is until you get caught of course.

If you want crew to do stuff you need crystal clear rules so that everyone knows where they can step. not a minefield gray area for literally anything other than just doing your job and clashing with the Standard Operating Procedure.

# Closing notes
*Note: this is unformatted, written text from kie's, ask em if you need further clearance.*
### Our take on the fabled "middle" roleplay:tm: (KitKat's toughts)
In my personal pondering, I find that there's multiple types of roleplay actually, and altough not mutually exclusive, they have diffrent incentives and promote diffrent things.
* **background roleplay types** - forms of roleplay where players meerly immerse themselves in the world
* **character roleplay** - the acts of making a character and immersing yourself in them. pretty simple. there's nothing wrong with it (unless things get way to out of hand in character uniqueness) it helps in immersion and vauge worldbuilding
* **loreplay** - the act of accepting and playing with the world's lore and context. it requires a established world so all players roughly on the same page. it could be used to make otherwise abstract events have a stronger impact or even affect the gameplay progression as players know. who, what, when, where, why (we should aim to give relatively open ended context and lore to various noncrew roles)
* **world play** - the act of acknoledging understanding and roleplaying around the fact that. the world is not just the shift. the actions of players affect things beyond the shift end(in roleplay). and thinking in the context of... when round ends nothing matters (id say this one is rather poorly executed so far. not only is the wider world nigh nonexistant command sometimes thinks calling the shuttle is somehow a victory agaisnt antags... (mm yes yielding our multimilion credit facility to the enemy over the slightest conflict because it ends the shift and they technically redtext). this a form of rp that would benefit mechanical incentives
* **proactive roleplay types** - the roleplay that affects player actions
* **gimicking** - a form of roleplay where players design their own personal goal in the absence of a given one. on its own not bad. may be a warning call that something's probably missing in the game*
* **LARPplay** - a vaiation of gimicking where the gimick if a playpretend of something. while commendable this form of roleplay can be argued to be rather poor in driving shifts and ought to be avoided. LARPplay is about as sturdy as its foamy namesake. it lacks pushing power to drive things outside of other players playing along and can easily just be ignored. it is not allowed to engage or manifest conflict as by its nature its not real and thus it feels wrong and somewhat against the rules to actually spend real resources engaging with it or pushing it. also when real conflict arises LARPplay is the first to fizzle out so rather than curveballs dynamically pushing things around they meerly kill it. (if you've ever wondered why no one cares about the crack dealer assistant its because it is a form of LARPplay as drugs are a compleate meme. and totaly useless)
* **mechanical roleplay** - a state of roleplay where gameplay mechanics and insentives push players to engage the world. if open ended enough it may allow for mechanical gimicking - it is quite hard to achieve yet powerfull if done right. for it is real. there's no playing along or ignoring it. you play with and around real systems that push and pull. you arent roleplaying a role. you are PLAYING THE ROLE and that comes with real stakes conflict and unexpected twists and turns.
(the fear of making things for the sake of winning is missguided. in this world everything is about succeeding your endeavors. what matters is your winning to engage push and pull with other players cooperatively or conflictingly. rather than... ahem(stealing some item. killing some dude in the sneakiest way possible and afk'ing in the bar for the rest of the shift) and to also make sure interaction is encouraged rather than soloing everything silently)

frontier dystopia seeks to expand on the **loreplay, worldplay and mechanical roleplay**.
create a somewhat more immersive and vaugely more alive world, try to insinuate players to think beyond the context of "the shift" and mechanically reward/punish actions in the context of how will the actions affect your character's life post the round (getting promoted/demoted being a loyalist/skepticist finally meaning something beyond loosing access)