It'll probably be procedurally generated content - mobs, starsystems, and quests. E.G there is a bounty on ship xxx.

Yeah, I'd imagine Dentin would do something about newbie areas, he just doesn't seem the kind of person to throw newbies out in the deep. Not after I've seen what he's done to alter. I played real briefly back in 06, and boy was it different. I felt lost from the moment I started. But its changed so much. I could be completely wrong of course, but still it sounds interesting.

I'm eagerly awaiting this one. Sounds like great fun

I don't know if oriol will create another mushZ for stelleraeon, sinse he already has a huge amount of work maintaining the mushZ for alter and goodness knows what kinds of rewrites a new MushZ would require even from the same developer as Alteraeon, though we'll see, sinse it might turn out at least some of the code is transferrable.

Still if nothing else the thing will always be playable with standard interpreters like vipmud.

the problem is combat. what if it is sort of like miriani or star conqu wall est? there you need to be very fast, aspecially if you are the pilot. I mean in those games if you don't keep moving, the enemy is going to get hits in. and the only way I know of doing that as a blind person whose screen reader, no matter how fast can't keep up if there isn't a spam filter and or sounds, is to use a spam filter and or sounds.

so this game is like miriani? Do it have guns for the weapons? Do it also have aliens to kill and missions like salvaging, mail delivery, passenger transporting, etc?

Stellar Aeon isn't very far along at this point:

- star systems are up and working, with a home galaxy a few thousand light years across
- basic ships are able to explore and check things out
- part of the account system is built and working

At the moment, the big emphasis is on the account system, as I'm working on that for Alter Aeon and several other projects combined.

Regarding future features of SA, all that I'm willing to say right now is that PvP will probably only be done via combat simulators at a starbase.  I almost certainly won't allow open piracy.

What are some of the classes? One I would like to see is a hacking class the ability to work with computers and other forms of tech. But I can't wait until this comes out.

@Slj, as I said, those were the things that interested me too, lack of pvp and lots of exploring. I've not heard anything else about the game's further development outside this topic from last year, but knowing Dentin things are probably still chugging along and we'll hear all about it when it's ready.

@hhurstseth405, I don't know what Dentin plans for classes in the game or in fact if he plans any at all. Even if he id I would hope he has a similar model to alter where your classes are more like priorities, so you always have choice in what you do.

If you want to play a computer hacker, you should try wayfar144, it's got lots of things to hack, various hacker skills and even a way of finishing a turn aroun the game as the hacker profession. You can find alien artifacts and lost datachips in the wilderness to hack, and even hack into vehicles and bases by hacking the door's entry codes though you nee to be careful and purchice good gear or otherwise the security of whatever your hacking might zap you with electricity.

There is the potential to hack into someone else's vehicle or building and steal it, though Wayfar1444 is one of those odd games where pvp exists, but doesn't seem to be practiced too much.

Wow Dentin, this is souning awsome! I very much look forward to trying it. One question on crew management though. I've always fancied to actually physically run a crew on a starship and deal with things like tention between two crew members or crew members having different priorities, however in the few accessible space games that have crew, crew is basically treated like an extra statistic to manage.

For example, in Smugglers marines and pirates add to your crew's boarding and crew combat stats, while crewmen and officers help you fly the ship, however all pretty much are bought like an extra equip upgrade and once paid for don't really need worrying about accept replacing when they die. In star traders your crew are a little better sinse they do have a morale stat, and if this gets too low they'll mutany, however in practice this doesn't mean much and so long as you make sure to have some luxury rations on your ship, not run out of fuel, and pay for some entertainment for the crew in spice halls nothing that bad happens, heck you can even pirate other ships an press gang their crews into service on yours, and while this will initially hit your morale it can be made okay with a good night in the spice hall, which is craaaazy!

I'd love to see a situation where you actually had crew with a bit more personality, like maybe you had someone who was a brilliant engineer, but erratic and caused accidents so you had the choice to promote her or not, or someone who had been assigned to maintenance but he wanted to be a targeting oficer, so requested a transfer, or maybe two crew who had a fued and so needed separating onto different stations, or indeed two crew who wanted to get married and work together and threatened to leave unless you assigned them the same duties.

I've always thought that would be the appealing part of being on a starship, sinse fundamentally you'd be stuck with a bunch of people who were stuck together in rather close quarters for long periods and hell the tentions would need some careful handling.

I don't even imagine this would be that tough to do mechanics wise, just have each crew member have a tention/happiness stat which collectively affect the hole crew, and have od events crop up which trigger changes in that stat from time to time depending upon how you deal with them, and obviously a happy crew works better at everything while a tense or unhappy one does not.

Hay if this isn't planned for the game or possible with current mechanics fare enough, it's just that much as I've really wanted to see a space exploration game, I've always thought all! aspects of exploring and managing a starship were interesting including how this affects the crew.

Btw For a fantastic account of this sort of thing, check out the solar clipper series by Nathan Lowel, they're both printed books and available as free podcast novels here and are basically the adventures of a man who signs up to be an officer on a cargo freighter, trading on various spaceports. Though there are certainly crysese, there is no big space war or alien encounters or whatever, just the story of a man getting on with his life in a quite extraodinary, though often not very glammerous way (he actually begins in the ship's galley).

Ah, glad you liked the thought. One thing I've found in several games (most recently with an economic sim), is it is much more fun dealing with unpredictable things and making judgements than just coldly running the stats, plus of course it gives a far better idea that the characters your managing in the game on your crew are real people, and not just extra adds to your main stats that cost a certain amount, or produce a set amount or are just canon fodder to throw at your enemies and replace each time they go down.

A dark room made this point rather nicely, given that at the start of the game you build huts to attract setlers who constantly produce more resources such as wood and animal pelts and are listed as "x number of villagers",
Then, rather abruptly when you've built a couple of huts the "x number of villagers" suddenly changes to "X number of slaves" along with a few short but affective messages about the people working. Apparently some players put the game down at that point, I personally found it a rather clever one (and an important lesson for real life in terms of turning people into rore statistics).

It's odd, you can simulate quite complex behaviours with interactions of very few stats in any system that has a limited time aspect, the choiceofgames with their distinct choices and percentile stats show that, but I don't know why more games involving any style of management do it.

Either way, if this sort of thing makes it into stellar aeon I'll be very pleased, and if not, ---- well hay I can just pretend i'm Captain Picard and so all my crew think I'm awsome anyway! .